The mess of the Citizen's Opportunity to Address the Council

During the February 8, 2010 Sac City Council meeting I made aloud to the Sac City Council the same points that I made in the TSN story entitled, Understanding the Sac City budget, Part 1: Community Requests

One of the concerns I raised was regarding the entity Partners for Progress. According to information put out by Sac Community Center meetings, last year they served in the neighborhood of 10 customers. I also pointed out that the Partners for Progress, back when they were calling themselves Horizons indicated publically that they would not ask for money from the taxpayers. I concluded this portion of my address by pointing out that this was the second year they were asking for tax money and I asked for the council's justification in funding them.

Mayor Barb Powell's answer was that the Partners for Progress are moving to a new location because people did not like to go to the Sac Community Center because they think it's too public. According to Mayor Powell, Partners for Progress is moving to a new location to "...try it again". The Mayor suggested that a lot of the work the Partners for Progress are doing doesn't happen at the Sac Community Center. According to Mayor Powell, they are helping get food packets out, and doing free income tax for people, and were responsible for the freecycle day last summer at the Chautauqua building.

(Please note that the tax preparation is a piggy back program that the Partners for Progress are doing with the ISU Extension.)

The mayor said that if I had any more questions she wouldn't be able to answer them, in spite of the fact that she is on the Finance committee and was partially responsible for determining whether the Partners for Progress would be eligible to receive funding this year.

I confirmed with her that when the Partners for Progress move into the Senior Center they will be paying $1,200 in rent for the year, and in return, the Mayor emphasized that the Partners for Progress are going to put out their own sign in front of the Senior Center that would help the public to find them better.

(Besides the location of the photo copier, signage is one of the main concerns that were repeatedly expressed to the former director of the Sac Community Center by the Partners for Progress leadership.)

She also indicated that organizations of this nature need some time to catch on.

Basically satisfied with her justifications for giving money to the Partners for Progress I moved on.

I then asked why, if the Partners for Progress are going give the Senior Center $1,200 this year, which is $200 more in revenue than the Senior Center received last year, why is the city going to give them anything. I asked, "Why not let Partners for Progress fund them?" which would allow the city to take the Senior Center out of the equation until such time as the Partners for Progress moves on and the Senior Center needs taxpayer funding again?

The Mayor said that she could not answer my question. When I pressed her, and said that it was my opinion that the city should not fund the Senior Center until they again need it, the mayor suggested that the Senior Center does need the money. According to Mayor Powell the Senior Center is, "...trying to do a lot of projects. They're trying to better their facilities in the hopes that they get more of our seniors because they have said...A lot of seniors won't go because they think it's not a pleasant place to be."

At this point in the conversation, most of the Mayor's reasoning made sense to me and I was ready to move on. Council person Brian Muska said that I made a valid point and that it was something that "We could look into and discuss."

Because blow off answers like that one get on my nerves I asked Mr. Muska, "Is it going on as a discussion point next meeting?"

He answered, "It's better than sitting here and telling you that we're not going to take it into consideration, and that's what I'm saying."

I pointed out, "That's not really a good consolation prize."

Mr. Muska said, "I'm not really trying to give you a consolation prize. You seem to have the right answers all the time, how come you don't run for city council?"

I stammered a bit at this point and Mr. Muska found my words for me asking, "Conflict of interest?" to which I confirmed that that was how I felt.

He nodded and indicated that he disagreed with that saying, "...you're interested, your here all the time." I didn't take the obvious set up and ask him if he knew what that phrase meant but I did point out that I’m running a for profit business.

Council Person Nich Frohardt chimed in with a little tension breaker at this point and said, "Most of the time I think I am too, but some years don't work out that way."

I thought, "Tell me about it!'

The Mayor dismissively asked if there were any questions or comments and if anyone had anything else by way of answer for my questions, (Which she actually mostly answered a few minutes earlier.)

Council Person Jim Johnston decided to bare his teeth and said to me, "I'd like to say this, the reason a lot of people don't give opinions in here is because on your website you slant everything that somebody says."

I can only assume he's talking about the word for word transcriptions that I am rather fond of running. Probably he's not so fond of The Sac News because I got to the bottom of just who's idea, (Council Person Jim Johnston's) it was to award Mediacom a franchise without giving the public a proper opportunity to be heard.

Brian Muska then also decided to get his jab in saying that I, "Give [my] point of view and only [my] point of view!"

I answered calmly, "Everyone is welcome to come up and give their point of view." (I reflected to myself how most opposing points of view ran along the lines of “You need to get a job” and the classic, “you just hate your step-mother.” ;)

Mr. Johnston continued on his earlier track saying, “The only thing I've heard from several people in the community. The reason they don't show up at these meetings is because that camera's on and they don't want to be on camera.

I said "I can't help it if there are people that are afraid."

Mr. Johnston said, "Well, I'm just telling you. You’re scaring people away." Mr. Muska also pointed out, "You're not the spokesperson either for the whole city." To which I replied that I'm the first person anyone comes to on the internet and that I’ve got a lot more people reading me. It felt a little arrogant putting it that way, but it’s not by my choosing that the members of the city council refuse to communicate with the public through TSN or the Sac Sun. As I recall, former mayor Lonnie Rubendall use to regularly write “From the desk of the Mayor” style pieces in the Sac Sun.

They are choosing to let my opinion be first and most widely read. They have a really slick website at their disposal at http://cityofsaccity.org and could choose to communicate their one single message per month instantly, long before I wade through the 63ish stories I’m working on every week and get down to writing the editorials.

I ended my address saying that I think it's deplorable that the city is giving $50,000 total to the Sac Community Center and Kid's World and that nobody from the council is showing up to represent the council, (read that: taxpayer's interests) on those boards.

In the middle of my statement, Mr. Johnston interrupted me and told me that it was my opinion and was not, "the rest of our opinions."

Mr. Muska said, "Most of us have a full time job, Curtis, and we are not city employees and we do this on pretty much a volunteer situation to do this, and yes we get a total of $25.00 per council meeting."

I said, "you ran." meaning that he is the one who wanted to be on the city council. He seemed to understand that because he said, "That's exactly right, why didn't you?"

It was a "see previous answer" moment regarding my conflict of interest with sitting on a board while reporting on its doings.

Mayor Powell, pointed out a factual error I had made in speaking, noting that Jim Frederick's attendance on the Kid's World board was nearly flawless, which is true. Mr. Frederick DOES do a great job of representing our interests on the Kid's World Board, and I spoke out of turn when I said that.

She didn't address Mr. Johnston's complete absence from the Sac Community Center's board however.

Mayor Powell, said, "I really think we need to move on."

Because I was getting really sick of her dismissive attitude I overly rudely said, "I'm really not done addressing you yet." She excused herself and indicated with her body language that I could continue. A little embarrassed regarding my tone, I thanked her and continued.

I said, "You are giving Kid's World $20,000 this year." I then pointed out that on page 13 of the proposed budget it indicated that Kid's World would be giving the city back $18,000. I continued, "It just seems like you are literally paying them so that they can pay you back."

I pointed out that Kid's World has a lot of financial problems, to which Councilperson Muska vigorously nodded, so I asked, “If you're going to do this charade year after year, why not just forgive their debt and just say "they're an asset to the community?" and get that monkey off their back?"

Mayor Powell answered, "We have discussed that. It's not foreign to our conversation, we have discussed it, and we're all very much aware of what's going on.'

Sandy Tellinghuisen, the Sac City Clerk broke in at that point and, "They did ask the auditor that question, Curtis, about forgiving it, and they said, legally the best thing to do would be to do what they're doing right now." Then she paused and made a "what can you do?” gesture with her hands and added, "From an audit perspective"

Mayor Powell reiterated her point that forgiving the loan had been part of the discussion, but that they found out, "there are some things that we cannot do."

With that the portion of the conversation in which the Mayor allowed me to participate ended.

Later on while the City Council was considering accepting the proposed budget as recommended by the finance committee, Council Person Muska asked if there was a possibility that the finance committee could get together and discuss some of the points I brought up.

Council Person Johnston replied, "I don't think people realize the amount of hours that Barb, myself, Jim and Adam have spent on this budget. We've probably spent 5 to 6 hours, and if people think we, this list of money that we give out, we take lightly, we don’t. We discuss everyone, go through their budget that they give us, so I mean; I think we've done the best that we can do."

Mr. Muska indicated that he was "fine with" what the finance committee decided.

Mr. Johnston went on saying, "I mean. I don’t have a problem if we want to have another meeting and go through things again that's fine, but like Adam said, we're under a timeline now."

As the debate about whether to have another look at the budget continued it occurred to me that what Jim Johnston had just said spoke volumes about the process.

If you'll recall, even though it says so on the budget calendar the city council approved that evening, (see document below) the city council did not actually have a preliminary budget to review on January 25 because the weather had knocked the computers out. Because there was no preliminary budget even available until well into the next week for ANYONE to review, that means on the evening of February 8, they should have set the calendar back and done a preliminary review of the budget that night, and then proceeded accordingly.

But what do I know, right?

Following is a copy of the budget calendar that the Sac City Council approved on the evening of February 8, 2010.







Copyright (c)2007-2010 Curtis Bloes
All Rights Reserved