It was the meeting where the Ad-hoc committee came out a winner! I think every segment of the city may now have a designated ad-hoc committee. I know it sounds like I'm teasing, but I'm actually a fan. It encourages some form of discourse.
One of the best parts: Milne and Youssef think union negotiations should be public! Guess what? So do I. Of course, they are saying that now! Why didn't they push for this 2 years ago? 6 months ago? I do think the public would have been outraged much sooner had the negotiations been made public. As a side note: No offense San Jacinto, but you are exactly what Hemet should be trying to avoid. It is unfortunate because we share this valley and now half of it is a bit of a mess! I just heard that the utility tax may be presented to San Jacinto voters once more.
The debate over paying a real property advisory, marketing and sales services company $101,155.00 to assess how to sell some city property is underway. This is an up-front cost and if/when the property sells (7 in this case), some of the $101k will be put toward the commission. At the January 13th meeting, the amount was just under $145,000. By removing Gibbel Park, the fee reduced by that much? Apparently, council was being asked to vote on this without being presented with or first reading an actual contract. And no, I'm not kidding. I thought we all learned the last time around that we should dissect contracts before we vote on them. Thankfully, a few members of council did their job. The company is called RSG, Inc. and they are based out of Santa Ana. The link is below. Hemet is already down on the list as a client. Has the city used RSG for prior services? I am trying to figure out why there is such a push for this.
http://www.webrsg.com/clients/
One of the Ad-hoc committees created was in response to public safety belonging to the people. Mayor Krupa is asking that this committee be formed and have recommendations within the next six months. Raver wanted it to be sooner.
Here is how I see it: If the people pay taxes on it and the entire scope of the service changes, then it should go to a vote. The concern that some of council is having is with the language of it. Some council and public safety are concerned that the language could limit or prohibit future contracting out of services in the form a cooperative agreement with another agency. Public safety should be allowed to engage in cooperative agreements with other agencies that assist in filling a gap in service (example: CHP patrolling Florida Ave). If you are going to transition the management of the entity in its entirety to an external agency in the form of a contractual agreement, I believe that calls for a vote of the people. This is because public safety is a significant percentage of our budget. It is wrong for tax payers to not have a say in how that plays out. We do elect people to office and hope they do their job, but allowing five people to control a significant monetary shift in service and management truly concerns me. The language will have to be very clear. How do we protect our public safety and tax dollars without tying the hands of our Police and Fire Chiefs? That is the multi-million dollar question!
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