Everyman's View Of City Council

"HOLY SMOKE, Joe! The city council meeting was hot tonight. Oddly, not so much in votes. But Campbell and Cohen were asking reaaaallly good questions about contracts tonight during award of bids. The public works guys were cool with it, and the ladies were just talking with them. Even accepted some of their suggestions. Bottom line is, there are some good folks working for the city. But we taxpayers really need somebody who knows how to negotiate and manage contracts.

And what the bleep was up with the annexation resolutions? From Cohen's description, it sounded like they've been using some kind of weird two-part resolution to move annexations through. How can they be voting on resolutions where the wording is going to change after they vote??? If I were that developer, I'd be talking to an attorney to tell the city "get it right" before somebody protests it and wins just because the city attorney writes funky resolutions.

Love Campbell going up against Comegys over schools. Campbell thinks the city ought to be keeping track of how many kids are going to fill up school through these annexations. Comegys said as long at the county gets its impact fees for schools, the schools aren't the city's problem. Jesus, he sounded just like Cathcart!

Finally, the North Prong study discussion was HOT! John Pick and Lore Chambers were pushing to get a resolution approved to "accept" the North Prong plan. A guy with a business at that end of the river got up and asked, "Do you NORMALLY pass a resolution to just accept a study?" Well, the more Pick and Chambers tried to downplay the resolution as just "accepting" a report, the more it sounded like a back door to "ADOPTING" the plan -- without anyone getting to say whether they even liked it! Some guy kept yelling from the audience that it was full of errors. Campbell, Cohen, and everyone just kept pushing back on this "accept" vs. "adopt" nonsense. Campbell moved to postpone and thank goodness Shanie was upset that people were upset and said, "Just withdraw it." So Campbell accepted that as a friendly amendment and it passed 4 to 1! Comegys yelled "no!"

That little difference in wording could have cost us MILLIONS of dollars, Joe!!! Man, you gotta see the facial expressions throughout this one.

I thought Louise Smith was going to implode. She can't run a meeting. Couldn't keep stuff straight again. Then she had to cope with the upset guy yelling from the audience. Oh, and of COURSE when she saw Shields going with Campbell and Cohen, she voted to leave Comegys out in the cold as the lone "no" vote. Her nickname is understandable.

Boy, they ought to just put Cohen in charge of the meetings and Campbell in charge of contracts. It'd be a little more boring for us, but think of how much better the meetings would run and how much money we'd save.

Well, I can dream, can't I?"