Rex ‘My way or the highway’ Rolfing
From my email box;
If you haven’t seen this yet, Councilor Rolfing is running interference now that Litz is moving on. BID was invited to the Land Use Committee meeting Monday, we were on the agenda last item to give a presentation of the Cherapa plan. Darrin Smith spent 45 minutes before us talking about the river greenway, pettigrew, gigglebees, redevelopment etc. We get ready to present (Jeff S. was there-Cherapa Place) and Councilor Rolfing chimes in about a “highly charged” presentation and we shouldn’t present without the other side and some other gibberish. Rex moved to change the agenda. Litz seconds the motion. So they vote and Rex votes yes to change the agenda and councilor Erpenbach votes no. Councilors Anderson and Litz don’t vote so they are counted as yays. Meeting over. Erpenbach was upset. Every other councilor but Brown was in the audience.
This email was sent to Rolfing after the meeting by BID;
Rex,
I won’t address your comments from earlier tonight, but I did think I should point out that your insistence that you had enough votes to pass the amendment was wrong. You made a motion to amend the agenda. You had one person (you) vote yes to amend the agenda. One person voted no. Two others didn’t vote. You need a majority of the members of the committee to vote in the affirmative to pass your motion. Those who didn’t vote should be counted as no votes. You did not have a majority vote to amend the agenda.
But according to the Argue Endorser;
Rolfing made a motion that the presentation be removed. He voted in favor; Erpenbach opposed. Councilors Bob Litz and Kenny Anderson Jr. did not vote, which under the council’s rules counted as yes votes.
Seems a little odd to me? I would think if they didn’t vote, they didn’t count, which would have made it a tie. But hey, I don’t make up the rules here.
While I’ll stay out of this pissing match, I will say two things;
1) BID is correct, Rolfing didn’t have the authority on his own to amend the agenda.
2) This is a perfect example of why the committee meetings need to be video recorded.
It speaks to the larger issue, the decision on location has been made and won’t be changed. This decision is based on politics, not economics. BID has been told to “trust the process”, but what you really have is a dog and pony show purely for political cover. You also have manipulation of data at the highest levels of City government in an effort to back into the decision that’s been made. The Mayor himself has said we will “trust the experts” on the site and his experts have picked Cherapa place as the site they feel is most viable to compare to the Arena. There was nothing “highly charged” about it. You have an enthusiastic land owner who’s giving up about $30 million in potential rent revenue over the rest of his lifetime in order to sell a parcel for the EC back to the City for $5 a square foot, which is what he paid a decade ago. Parcels of downtown land have been selling in the $20’s and even $30’s per square foot, even as recently as last fall. The guy is getting a great big middle finger from this Administration, so what message does that send to the rest of the world who may or may not decide to invest here?
The truth is the Mayor has had a plan for a long time. It will go down how he sees it and nothing will alter that. If he’s willing to shortchange the City millions of dollars on the location choice, how do you think he will behave when the discussion turns to financing, funding and usage?