City Council Agenda for December 6th
COULD BE A SHORT MEETING
The agenda for the Costa Mesa City Council meeting to be held on Tuesday, December 6, 2016 beginning at 5:45 p.m. in City Council Chambers at City Hall was posted Thursday afternoon. You can read that agenda HERE. A quick look at that agenda leads us to believe this may be a very short meeting. Beyond the Consent Calendar, there is only one business item to be heard. We'll see.
First up on the agenda is the Mayor's Award, this time to Jim Jordan and creator of the Snoopy House that will be launched at City Hall on December 10th. This seems like a worthy presentation for what may be Steve Mensinger's swan song, but I didn't realize we gave Mayor's Awards to consultants (see below).
CONSENT CALENDAR
After Public Comments and Council Member Comments and the CEO Report the council will consider the Consent Calendar. As you know, I've griped about this segment for a long time, primarily because there seem to be issues on the Consent Calendar that would be more properly part of the open agenda. Such is the case this time around. This Consent Calendar has 15 entries! I'm not going to cover all of them, but let's take them from the top.
Item #2 is Warrant 2567, HERE, and, as always, there are items of interest to us all. I won't try to cover all of them, but here are a few that caught my eye. I present them in order as they appear on the Warrant, so if you want a peek at them, and other items, just go to that link and scroll down:
- Civil Source - $42,112.00 - CIP Proj. Staff Support, Sept. 16
- Complete Landscape Care, Inc - $58,891.00 - Landscape Maint. Oct. 16
- Jones & Mayer - $74,214.22 - Legal Services, Yellowstone
- Travel Costa Mesa - $209,756.88 - BIA Receipts for Sept. 2016
- C3 Technology Services - $9,081.28 - Sharp Television and more
- James R. Jordan - $8,250.00 - Snoopy House Design Consulting
- Johnson Favaro LLP - $204,185.00 - Library/NCC Design 9/16-10/14
- Keolis Transit Services LLC - $49,447.68 - Senior Transport
- Liebert Cassidy Whitmore - $6,142.50 - Legal, CMCEA/Fire Negotiations
- Management Partners Inc. - $10,788.75 - Consulting Svcs DS 10/1-10/14
A couple notes... That Jones & Mayer amount is for ONE case - Yellowstone - and represents about 25% of a typical monthly bill from them. We'll see what the warrant looks like the next time around.
It's interesting that we're apparently paying Jim Jordan - the gentleman who is receiving the Mayor's Award - as a consultant. I've seen other payments to him in the past.
And, we've paid Johnson Favaro another couple hundred grand for their work on the Library/NCC project.
And, I didn't list them all, but this warrant has tens of thousands of dollars spent on consultants for a whole list of things - Plan Check, Building Inspection, etc. More on this later.
FOR EXAMPLE...
Item #4, HERE, is the Emergency Purchase request for Professional Inspection Services. Apparently we have so much Commercial building going on in the city that we don't have enough inspectors - staff or consultants - to meet the demand. The cost for these services will be covered by unpaid salaries of vacant positions.
AND...
Similarly, on Item #5, HERE, is the request for contract change orders for two consulting firms currently working for us increasing the contracts by a combined $750,000! Earlier the staff asked for, and received, authorization to spend $900,000 for Engineering staff support. According to the staff report, we currently have eleven (11) vacancies in the Engineering and Transportation Divisions, including two Division Manager vacancies. The council has approved $42 million in Capital Improvement Program (CIP) projects and we have insufficient staff to manage them. The question here is WHY do we have the vacancies? The answer may be because the Miscellaneous Employees contract approved earlier this year took them back 3 decades and folks just don't stick around when they can do the same job for more money at other cities. And, I suspect the toxic work environment imposed by the current council majority may play a part, too.
Item #6, HERE, is the awarding of the contract to re-construct Fire Station #1 in the amount of $7,767.000. Finally, this project will get moving!
Item #13, HERE, is the contract for the Median Landscape and Irrigation Improvement Project along Mesa Verde Drive, replacing grass with drought tolerant plants and installing irrigation. The project cost is $457,737.00.
19TH STREET BIKE TRAIL
Item #14, HERE, is the Cooperative Agreement for the Bicycle Corridor Improvement Program Project - West 19th Street Bicycle Trail. Two years ago the City secured grant funding in the amount of $1,704,000 for this project.
If nothing is pulled from the Consent Calendar it's likely that we will reach the first and only real piece of business on the agenda, Old Business #1, HERE, well in advance of the 7:00 witching hour. This is the second reading of the ordinance involving the new California Codes. The first reading took less than 5 minutes. This will take 1 minute.
So, depending on what gets pulled for discussion from the Consent Calendar, and how many people line up for Public Comments - most will have probably worn themselves out at the Planning Commission meeting on Monday - this could be a VERY short meeting. We'll see...
Labels: City Council, Fire Station #1, Jim Jordan, Snoopy House, Steve Mensinger
posted by The Pot Stirrer at 12/02/2016 01:33:00 AM
2 Comments:
Steve's median project - what half a million here or there. Totally unnecessary use of funds which could be better spent on park maintenance or almost anything else.
Wassup with the Mayor's award to a paid consultant, HELLO. he was paid, oh, nutz, give him the crummy city hat and phone certificate. Did I mention he was PAID....to do a job, he did the job, he got paid and we give him an award....I guess it could be worse, could be Jones Mayer or Rutan and Tucker. Jeez, when does the new council come on board, not soon enough!
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