Thoughts on last evening’s council meetings:

From a news article about last evening’s city council work session:

“The public safety levy brings in roughly $2 million annually for the police and fire divisions through income taxes. It expires at the end of 2012. While council members have indicated they will likely ask voters to renew that levy, it’s passage is uncertain.

Councilman Josh Laubach said the levy would be a hard sell to residents…”

Darn tootin’ it’ll be a hard sell!!! In fact, City Council has a lot of gall to exclude the great majority of the citizens from the opportunity to watch/listen to the budget discussions by holding them in their cozy semi-secret upstairs NON-council meeting room, and then ask those very same citizens who weren’t good enough to be privy to those discussions to vote for taxes to support deals that may have been made in those meetings!!!

One of the first items on the agenda for the business meeting was: “Transfer Options – Vacant Residential Lot on Main Street” however, during the open part of the meeting, not a word was mentioned about this subject!!! We can only surmise that this was discussed in the semi-secret portion of the meeting. After all, if this was a hallowed S. Main Street lot, we know how picky certain folks are about who is “allowed” to acquire such properties and it would have behooved Mulligan, Kohler, and their buddies to “keep it in the PRISM family” by hook or crook lest some “undesirables” get their hands on it. We should have known that was scheduled for the non-secret portion of the meeting by mistake. They wouldn’t risk talking about this in the open.

Next on the agenda was: “Transfer of Property – Board of Education – Curtis Street”. After a short presentation (without much substance) Councilman Becker opined that it was a “no brainer” to give the property to the School District. No mention was made that this “no brainer” would also be in violation of City Ordinances requiring public bids for the sale of City property valued at over $5,000.00!!!

Next came the “consent agenda”. That’s always the mundane stuff, right??? Nothing interesting there, is there??? Of course not!!! Just as there are never any decisions made or votes taken in executive sessions. Why, that would be illegal, wouldn’t it??? Well, carefully read through the pages and pages and read between the lines and you will find that someone who has been saying for years that the way this and previous councils have been stacking the various boards and commissions has been fraught with conflicts of interest and therefore illegal seems to have been correct!!! Does this mean that our city and its beleaguered treasury is about to be besieged with more lawsuits??? I dunno---maybe they discussed it during their secret sessions???

That’s it for tonight, but in closing let me leave you with these thoughts:

By now I’m sure that some of you are thinking that I’m making too much out of the “semi-secret work sessions” thing. Please trust me that I am not. Remember this: It is the very things that they may be uncomfortable discussing in front of the public that are the most dangerous to be discussed anywhere else!!!