If you didn’t watch or attend the last council meeting on Tuesday, October 3^rd, you missed the rare opportunity to witness city government, specifically the council, doing its job correctly.  As a councilman, you research the issue, develop your arguments, present the facts, listen to the public, and then make a decision.  While some may say I am touting what happened because I agree with what was done, that is partially correct.  It is hard to oppose common sense unless you are mayor Steve Bird and his sycophantic buddy, Jim Ernest.

There were three items of concern on the agenda plus my public comment about sidewalk vendors who aren’t really sidewalk vendors.  Two of the items related to wasteful spending with the consent calendar item of replacing a gate and barbed wire fencing providing proof of why you don’t want the city manager to have the ability to spend up to $100,000, let alone $25,000 without council approval.  Anyone who has listened to me rail against this can now see I was right.

Councilman Thom Bogue did what vice-mayor Don Hendershot use to do.  He went to the gate’s location to see for himself what condition the gate was in.  He took pictures.  Supposedly the gate was sagging and rusted but the pictures provided quite a different story.  Bogue had a problem spending $33,000 to remove this usable gate and putting in a new power operated one.  The staff report’s exact words describing the gate where “the remaining 30-plusyear-old pipe gate is rusted, sagging, and falling apart.”

The mayor, in his blind allegiance to the city staff of which he once was and evidently still believes he is part, attempted to give reasons why the area needed further security without an explanation of how it would be more secure.  After Bogue listened to him ignorantly rant for five minutes about the police firing range being behind that gate and not wanting his fellow officers having to manually open the gate on a rather infrequent basis, Thom calmly told Bird that the firing range was behind the sewer processing facility’s gate on the other side of the road.

My problem with this whole item was if city manager Jim Lindley had been given the ability to spend up to $100,000 without council approval, this would have been a done deal.  While Bogue missed the meeting where this alteration to Lindley’s duties and financial abilities was discussed, he was present at the second reading and expressed his concerns.  Councilman Kevin Johnson had weakly spoken against this while buying into Lindley’s argument that it was mainly for “pass through” expenditures for developers, I pointed out (at least twice) that the ordinance contained no such language.  Ernest was completely snowed after being the first one to object at the first hearing.

Again, I pointed out that the language added at the last moment by city attorney Doug White’s staff at Johnson’s request to have expenditures over $25,000 reported at the next meeting was “closing the gate after the cows have left the barn.”  It appears that the council suddenly are starting to listen to intelligent, coherent public comments as their action reflected that. Or is it because they know you will be reading  their shenanigans  in the Dixon Informer? 

Bogue made the motion to completely kill the ordinance and to have only the pass-through ability given to Lindley.  Again, Bird and Ernest failed to join the majority which they also did on the gate issue.  Guess they don’t like it when the council and the citizens are running the city instead of council sycophants for city staff, namely the real rulers the city attorney and city manager.  While I realize there was an item within the ordinance on contracts over $200,000 which needs to be amended to reflect the amount the State allows, that also can be separated out from this attempt at putting “riders” on necessary actions.

My public comment was made as a result of my doing some actual research into how the police would administer the new sidewalk vending ordinance designed to punish those with little financial means and targeted at the Hispanics who use push carts.  The law says it doesn’t apply to people selling on private property but only on public thoroughfares.  I read the handout provided to one vendor who has a health permit from the county and a business license from the city.  It had no such language contained within it.

The State made a law promoting these types of businesses.  What your council is doing is attempting to prohibit them.  The State stupidly gave cities the ability to “regulate” these businesses.  Regulation, in this case, is elimination by financially burdening them to the point they won’t find it worthwhile to do business in your neighborhood or on any other city street.  Of course, I guess the ice cream peddler could pull his cart into your driveway to dispense his wares.  The police wouldn’t even know this is legal.  After the meeting, certain remarks by a councilman makes me believe he understood the police incompetence, at the very least, although not the free market aspects.

At the end of the meeting, we had a free speech issue which even Ernest appeared to grasp until he managed to screw that up by making yet another ignorant comment.  Ernest understood removing the good citizens’ right to participate in council meetings remotely through Zoom but can’t grasp that you can’t regulate the content of free speech.  The council was told of “Zoom bombing”, where a group will all ask to speak in order to dominate or disrupt a meeting.

As long as a participant wants to speak to an item on the agenda and sticks to that topic or wants to speak on a topic within the “purview” of the council, he or she cannot and should not be silenced.  The First Amendment was put in place to protect viewpoints that those in power found obscene or counter to their positions.

While the entire council refused to get rid of Zoom except for staff participation as requested by our debatable, dubious, and once again missing in action attorney, Ernest suggested going to the State legislature to change or alter the Brown Act to prevent the exercise of objectionable free speech.  As the city clerk controls who can or can’t speak during the meeting, no one can disrupt the meeting unless the mayor doesn’t enforce the rules just as he can do for speakers at the podium.

What is the point of taking an oath of office if you don’t even understand the Constitution and its Amendments, Jim?

Knowing the way things were done in the past under a former mayor who will go nameless, I have to wonder how long it will take before lobbying begins to bring these items back despite the proof of their lack of necessity.

Let the sanity continue …