Well, I am not only new to this blogging thing, but have not been to many City Council meetings so these observations are not from a seasoned political junkie.
First observation is that PEOPLE NEED TO GO TO THESE MEETINGS AND WITNESS WHO IS AT THE HELM! Sacramento is an insane asylum and only divine intervention and a lot of work are going to stop that train wreck..but we CAN be instrumental in our local government! Know who you are voting for!!
There was a question last night about the bidding procedure and contract procurement of City jobs. I would like to preface this by stating that I think Alan Nakanishi is a very , very nice man, and I have never heard anything negative about Diede Construction. But when I heard Alan Nakanishi state that (not exact words) that he thought that Diede should be picked over a lower bidder because everyone is familiar with them and we know how they work, etc I almost fell out of my chair! Not only is this not within the law, but that is absurd! It is the City Council's job to approve contracts and isn't part of that, to save the taxpayers a little money- not just go with whatever good ol' boy "deserves" the job? That good ol' boy mentality is what cost the Lodi taxpayer hundreds of thousand of dollars with the Water Treatment Plant, and their decision to go with the in-house City proposal.
Next, of interest was Councilman Johnson's statement (again, not quoting- guess I need to take notes) but he was NOT in favor of the City-Middle Management's agreement, in particular in relation to the pensions. Johnson cited statistics stating that pension reform is the highest on the list of concerns of cities and counties and the ramfiications of not enforcing higher employee participation toward their pensions. Councilman Hansen (again, paraphrasing) that the city Of Lodi wasn't in as bad a financial position as other cities, so even though this is a 2 year contract, we should just approve the agreement and wait and see what this "morphs into". Another fall-off-my-chair moment! So let me get this straight- Lodi is in pretty good shape financially, so let's not take any precautionary steps to keep it that way! Let's throw the dice and hope that in 2 years, we are still in good shape!
Eegads, people- LET'S GET INVOVLED AND START PAYING ATTENTION!
