The Tuesday 5 June City Council meeting was another very long night, over 5 hours, not counting the executive session meeting prior to the regular meeting.
You can stream the video from the city’s website. Items on which I commented are at the time indexes listed below.
0:36:30. “Text” amendments to Scottsdale’s General Plan.
2:16:00. The $4 million annual financing renewal for the Scottsdale Cultural Council. This time index is for the beginning of the staff presentation and it is fairly short. You can see my comments at 2:20:30.
Contrary to assertions of Councilwoman (and former board chair of the Cultural Council) Linda Milhaven and Councilman McCullagh, this is EXACTLY what the City Auditor said about SCC’s items of non-compliance, right out of Audit number 1204:
This audit determined the SCC generally complies with agreement terms. However, certain contractual requirements can be strengthened or further enforced, such as earmarking a greater portion of the management service fees and requiring the SCC to develop more informative performance measures and a refined open meeting policy and practices [emphasis added] to better align with the City’s.
3:06:00. This was an interesting discussion about whether or not the city council is raising your property taxes (they did) and whether those increases will go away automatically when property values improve (I believe they do not, regardless of what was said). I did not speak on this item, but it is an important item, nonetheless.
3:40:00. As part of the monthly financial update presentation by the City Treasurer, I asked Mayor Lane to explain earlier comments that we are expecting a “surplus” vs two weeks ago when we adopted a budget that includes a deficit. The mayor chose not to address my request. I don’t know if that was silent agreement with my observation, or if he just couldn’t answer the problem.
3:50:00. The General Plan Update. Public comment on this item begins with Mike Kelly, and it is well worth your time to see all the comments (including mine) from the public on this topic.
4:21:00. McDowell Mountain Golf Club, city financing for the new clubhouse.