City Council Meeting Tomorrow
— by Jeffrey Wisniewski — 12 July 2010 — 1 comment below »
In addition to the value engineering study, other items on the agenda for Tuesday evening’s City Council meeting are also noteworthy.
The City Council will commence the design of the sewer system as it switches from the Pinole wastewater treatment facility to WCWD in Richmond. The preliminary design cost is $1.16m.
The Council will receive the Affordable Housing agency’s annual report (read: NEO/AHSG), which concludes that “over the past fiscal year, the measurable level of success in achieving program goals is clear.” Uhm, yea. (Interesting: the report fails to mention the company that runs the program.)
The Council, acting as the Redevelopment Agency, will pay the engineering firm HDR to pay for a full-time project manager at the City to manage the Intermodal Station project. The cost is $285k.
The Redevelopment Agency will also extend and expand the consulting and design contract with HDR for the Intermodal Station project. The tasks include the final designs for the café building and civic/transit plaza (now named “Hercules Plaza”), as well as design work on the waterside structure (ferry landing). The cost is $2.35m.
The complete agenda is available on the City’s website.
The council meeting this past Tuesday showed some interesting new twists and some of the usual actions by some of the main characters.
Joanne Ward was her usual shallow happy face self, congratulating people for watching the short July 4 parade and showing excitement for the Hercules’ newest restaurant. Joe Eddy, still has not been able to grasp the seriousness of what has been happening with the Hercules city government. His ego is big enough to show his being mad publicly that he does not want questions to be asked.
Much to our delight, Don Kuehne started questioning and commenting on the issues at hand. Despite the thick disgust within the extended podium of officials, he voiced out some of our concerns. Kris Valstad showed his humility by saying that he went to the last meeting of the Community Services Commission to listen and learn. I remember him showing up to the Planning Commission numerous times two years ago when he was campaigning. He saw the John Laing residents and joined in their efforts to shape their views regarding the Downtown Hercules project within their backyard. Ed Balico gave his important thoughts on the expired contract between the city and an engineering consulting company. This time, he did not automatically give his trust to staff and rubber stamp their wishes.
I think that as citizens become more informed and participate, we can along, with our local government make Hercules better. We have a long way to go. I believe that Don Kuehne has started the change in the quality of the council. This election year, we can add two more (unless Kris Valstad can suddenly prove himself as a strong, committed, inquisitive council person). In two years, we can finally get rid of the pervasive “us versus them” elected officials