A reader suggested I cull the routine items from 2009 (in addition to the 2010 list, so far). The following is the verbatim list of items greater than (or equal to) $100k that appeared in the consent calendar for either the City Council or Redevelopment Agency meeting agendas in 2009. Most of these — if [...]
A portion of the City’s combative response to the grand jury report made more than a few people lose their lunch. It was the City Attorney’s artful response on the subject of the consent calendar (emphasis added)… The Grand Jury’s comments regarding the consent calendar are misleading. The consent calendar is part of the City [...]
Leave it to a value engineering study — conducted by the same firm (HDR) responsible for the design, but a separate office1 — to start pointing out elements the City could cut back on and save costs yet still retain the core function of the project, i.e., a train pulling into station, and dropping off [...]
An end to easy-bake? … “Residents calling for more transparency in city government are forcing the Hercules City Council to answer questions about big-dollar appropriations that used to breeze to approval without any discussion.“
A report from the last City Council meeting… “Resident Bill Kelly took the council to task for regularly approving large expenditures on the consent calendar; during a stretch of 21 council meetings spanning a year, Kelly said, ‘no member of this board ever thought for one moment to exercise their right to say, “I want [...]
Adding dollar figures into the mix… “The Hercules City Council, without any discussion, awarded almost $1 million in service and consulting contracts for the current fiscal year to a firm founded by the Hercules city manager and now owned by two of his daughters.” Ahem, easy bake. The list of approved vendor contracts is available [...]
This was a big-ticket item that made its way on to the consent calendar at the last City Council meeting, and received no discussion during the meeting (easy-bake)… Hercules provides new cash infusion to first-time homebuyers program By Tom Lochner The Hercules City Council has appropriated an additional $500,000 for the First-Time Homebuyer Purchase Assistance [...]
I have been trying to come up with a nickname for this current City Council we have — Ward, McDonald, Balico, Valstad and Raines — and after a few iterations (e.g., Play-Doh, Set-It-And-Forget-It), I’ve concluded that Easy-Bake Oven provides the best analogy. The Council does not qualify as a “do-nothing” Council, but it certainly doesn’t [...]