
It wasn't the most interesting meeting to witness. At times it was almost painful to watch. The mind rebels at the prospect of being forced to watch such spectacles, like a kid recoils from eating spinach. But we are not the weak, and we must soldier on. Because if we don't, who in their right mind will? Without us the miscreants could be hiding in plain view, and nobody would ever see.
But even then, and after having said all the above, there were brief moments of brilliance and clarity. And we need to point them out because otherwise there would be nothing at all to write about. And that certainly can't be allowed to happen.
The biggest moment of all was the final victory for those advocating building sanity in the Canyon. The Canyon Zone Ordinance survived its last test, and now becomes law. Congratulations to all of those who worked so long and so hard to make it happen. The onslaught of nonsense thrown at these good people over the last few months by a handful of individuals from the home improvement trade had precious little effect in the end. Now if we can only do something similar for the rest of the City.
Heather Allen revealed some interesting numbers on the CRA. Her findings were posed to the City Council in the form of a series of questions, but if true (and none of the main players in any way contradicted what she said) the conclusion is startling. The City of Sierra Madre has now budgeted $6.7 million for CRA projects, which is what the City Manager revealed a few weeks back. But, according to Heather, out of that hefty sum $1.6 million will be spent for staff to implement these projects over the course of the next 5 years.
In other words, and if you strip away the suspect claim that this money is going to be used to compensate staff for time spent working on CRA projects (the CRA supposedly being a different governmental entity than the one they work for, even though the City Council runs it), it means these funds are being used to pay City Hall salaries. Which technically flies in the face of state law on this matter. I believe this is where Heather was going. Needless to say, it was very quiet up on the stage. Nobody said a peep.
Two very earnest women from SCAG were in attendance as part of Edison's meeting marketing moment. And far be it from me to say such a thing, but what they had to share wasn't really all that bad. It appears that our beloved regional planning authority has taken it upon itself to do the technical reports for climate change studies. Which are basically inventories of carbon emissions and greenhouse gas levels. This will save the General Plan Update Steering Committee a lot of work, time and budget. Otherwise we might have seen them out on the streets counting tailpipes. Or whatever it is you have to do in order to "inventory carbon emissions."
Karen Schneider showed us a lot of blurry charts while talking about how the City Staff's retirement funding is going. I would have liked to see the chart detailing all of the many things that badly need funding, but it was out of focus. Maybe it will be put up on the City of Sierra Madre website for public viewing. And maybe it won't. There doesn't seem to be any underlying logic to whether or not such things happen.
The Farmers Market question lurched back and forth like a nervous dog in a hot car. Which does raise this question: If Sierra Madre wants a Farmers Market so badly, why did the last one go out of business? Joe Mosca's suggestion that it went under because nobody could see it from Sierra Madre Boulevard was especially comedic.
John Buchanan gave a curious 10 minute talk about the necessity for "creating a political climate where everyone understands." Which struck me as odd coming from a fellow who has probably done more than anyone else in town to baffle people about what goes on with our city government. He apparently was talking about the political climate that must be created to enable resident acceptance of spending cuts for City services.
But later, and without even a wisp of acknowledgement of the irony in all this, John Buchanan then revealed to a stunned room of 10 or so spectators that "we're going to be floating bonds for any large capital improvements." So is he creating a "political climate" for money saving service cuts, or is it really all about drowning the city in vast amounts of new debt? There is seemingly little consistency in Mr. Buchanan's madness.
MaryAnn MacGillivray countered the baffling Buchanan by saying that it would be far better to find the money elsewhere than further jack up Sierra Madre's already crushing bond debt. To which Buchanan bristled like a porcupine. He apparently has his heart set on doing what his mentor Bart Doyle accomplished in 2003, selling millions of dollars in bonds and then dumping the resulting financial consequences on others. Enjoy your water rate increase, everybody.
Denise Delmar stopped by to light up the room with her observations about the progress being made by the General Plan Update Steering Committee. Which, by anyone's standards, has been immense. As you might recall from a couple of years back, $300,000 had originally been budgeted for the costs associated with creating a new General Plan. $50,000 was to be spent on the Housing Element, $50,000 on the Environmental Impact Report (EIR), with the $200,000 balance for the rest of the GP. Money that would be saved by the Committee doing that work for free as community volunteers. The Sierra Madre ideal in action.
But in what has been quite a baffling (and politically obtuse) move, our City Manager Elaine Aguilar continues to insist that the $200,000 be spent on the EIR. Which would pretty much defeat the whole purpose of 9 volunteers spending so much of their time creating a new General Plan for free. I mean, if the money was going to be spent anyway, why not just buy a plan from some damn consultant?
Fortunately for the City and the GP Committee's sense of selfless sacrifice, Denise Delmar was there to inform Elaine that the good people involved in this project want to bring the EIR in at considerably less cost.
And if anyone can explain Ms. Aguilar's motivation here I would be glad to hear it. That money is saved money, so why does Elaine so badly want to spend it this way?
MaryAnn MacGillivray closed the meeting with a few revelations about what is going down in the world of SCAG and its Community Education and Human Development (CEHD) Committee. It turns out that our "Housing Element" (which is where cities like ours are coerced into planning for possible development nobody actually wants) is due once again in October of 2013. Which is odd because we are still working on the one for CEHD's current requirements. Each time we do one of these things it costs us $50,000 a pop to Karen Warner's consultancy, so this is no laughing matter. And it was something that City Staff apparently knew precious little about.
The other piece of SCAG news is that going forward cities within the SCAG Republic can trade their RHNA (government dictated housing requirement) numbers to other "contiguous" cities. Apparently SCAG no longer cares where the housing is built, just as long as it happens. So maybe we can trade that low income housing requirement threatening to tear up Highland to Arcadia for a player to be named later? And who knows, maybe the homeless housing being pushed for Montecito can be swapped with Pasadena for Larry Wilson? I don't know what we would do with him, though.
And is it just me, or does this arrangement sound strikingly similar to the carbon trading called for in AB 32? Except this time the noxious substance being dumped elsewhere is unwanted low income housing.
One more note. In a woefully inadequate article on Patch, Justin Chapman identifies MaryAnn MacGillivray as Sierra Madre's representative to SCAG. Which is not true. Our representative is Joe Mosca. Who, after all these years, still doesn't seem to be able to get his lazy butt to their meetings. MaryAnn, who understands the threat posed by the lack of effort put forward by Joe on what are really very important matters, covers these meetings for the City unofficially, and in his stead.
While Joe, punky as ever, makes snide remarks about throwing out the SCAG reports she brings back.
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