UPDATE: The Council Meeting tonight got a little emotional
l3wis First, the council decided it was good idea to deny a sponsor of legislation (Brekke’s public input ordinance) from withdrawing her own legislation. It was extremely disrespectful, and to tell you the truth, I have never seen anything like it. I’m still baffled by it, and I think Janet was shell shocked. They essentially passed legislation she sponsored after she asked them to withdraw it so they could make it clearer. Than (Stehly and Starr) asked for it to be deferred and they denied that also (Brekke, Stehly and Starr tried to withdraw and defer) it failed a 5-3 vote.
The problem was that the new city attorney started a rumor that public input at first readings may be against the law. WOW! Really!? Then during the meeting he tried to deny he was being ‘political’. Uh, ok.
I basically told the council in the almost 17 years I have been addressing city council there has been extreme deterioration of public input, especially over the past two years.
In fact, the city dodged a gigantic 1st Amendment suit a couple of months ago, that I have said I will not discuss (I was also NOT involved) but am well aware of. I warned the city that if they ever want to go down that path, it will cost a lot of money and will be a huge embarrassment. The council is just a few nails shy of closing that casket.
UPDATE: Apparently some of the 5 who chose to move forward with the passage of this ordinance feel like they were making public input better, and the 3 (who actually fought for this to begin with) were against public input.
Oh the hypocrisy.
Quite the opposite. Brekke just wanted to make sure it was a solid ordinance before there would be any other entanglements.Â
I find it ludicrous and laughable that the 5 who voted against Brekke’s polite wishes think they were making public input better. Those 5 were the very rat finks who took away the 5 minutes for 2nd reading to begin with, they also took away power points and limited public input at the beginning to 3 minutes per person and a total of only 30 minutes. Brekke was attempting to fix what they wiped away. If they think they are some kind of public input champions by voting against Brekke’s wishes, they apparently have gone stark raving mad or have dimentia, especially after the hatchet job they did on open government this past summer.
SEWER RATES
For the first time ever I saw Director Cotter get emotional over something, he started to cry, and reassured us that planning for the new sewer plant has been going on for years by his team. While I believe him, I made the point earlier that while that might have been happening, the public was not aware. Cotter did say it was in the capital plan.
That is probably also true.
When I testified about this, my intention was not directed at city personnel, though it may have came off that way. My point was we had a certain person in charge who tried to keep this as quiet as possible. So while it may have been on the books, according to councilor Brekke since the 90’s, it certainly wasn’t talked about very openly, and here is my greater point;
• We had NO IDEA of the final cost until all the consultant reports were in.
• We were never told about this potentially very expensive project when we were discussing the river greenway, millions in TIF rebates, an Events Center, an Indoor Pool and an administration building. Not a peep.
I also commend Cotter’s work on this, it took years and was difficult, he also gets paid very well to do that job. But whether Mark volunteered his time or got paid for it doesn’t matter. We know why this wasn’t in the public eye, and that’s not on Mark, that is on the past mayor, and I made a point in my testimony to say he was the architect of keeping this project on the lowdown, not Cotter or any other city employee who assisted with this. Because if we would have known this major of a project was on the horizon, I think we all would have questioned those other expenses.
I get it, and I feel sorry for city directors, they follow the boss’s orders, good or bad. But unfortunately at the end of the day, when we have an administrator who gags our public employees the citizens are left holding the bag. And tonight that bag just happened be full of something and it wasn’t free tickets to nine Garth Brooks concerts.
