South Waterfront liens, This Morning at City Council

I attended City Council this morning, to hear the explanation from the Auditor’s Office Office of Management and Finance (OFM) regarding the issue of liens in South Waterfront. It was on the Consent Agenda; I mentioned it in Next Up at City Council and Frank Dufay commented on it. I then asked Commissioner Leonard to pull the item for discussion, which he did.

Here’s what I learned:

1. Items on the Council’s agenda are not routinely accompanied by an explanation, written by the staff person/office placing the issue on the agenda. Unless a Commissioner asks, in some cases they have no more information available to them than I do (and given by me to you) when researching Next Up at City Council. So some of the information given in today’s hearing may have been news to the Council, as it was to me.

2. The Auditor’s OFM staff said the lien transfer on today’s agenda was indeed authorized by the Eighth Amendment to the North Macadam Plan, as Frank stated. In other words, the time to protest it was when that Amendment was adopted, if anyone disagreed. The spokesperson said that Substitution of Satisfaction Program was authorized by Council to allow Local Improvement District (LID) obligations to be moved from one property to another in the same ownership, and that the item on today’s agenda was “necessary for billing”.

3. Other investors were offered the opportunity for a deal in today’s item; only North Macadam Investors (NMI) wanted it. The representative from the Auditor’s office stated the payments still be made on the same schedule, they are “just” being assessed on different properties owned by the same developers. (Note: this is different from the explanation given to Ryan Frank, that NMI needed the ordinance to have permission to pay the indebtedness off early.)

4. No answer to my question of why the Council set up the process this way in the Eighth Amendment, that items like this have to come back for a full Council vote. I have to assume that at the time, they saw some public purpose in doing so. To me, the public purpose is in citizens knowing that developers are being held to their obligations, in return for large quantities of public money aiding their developments.

5. No answer to my question as to whether this item would be on the agenda under the proposed new form of government – but nobody contradicted my assertion it would not.

The item passed unanimously. I didn’t have any argument that it should not – I simply wanted everyone (Council and the public, as well as myself) to understand what it was doing. This value was provided, by respectfully asking staff give an explanation in a public meeting.

How will the public purpose intended by requiring items like this to be on the public agenda, be attained if the deals are done behind closed doors, should Measure 26-91 pass?