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In "Mayor Hiremath And Appointed Council Member Solomon Seek To Reduce "Transparency" we wrote of a move by Mayor Hiremath and Appointed Council Member and 20112 Council Candidate Steve Solomon to eliminate the requirement of summary minutes at council and commission meetings in favor of action minutes. Summary minutes provide some, but not all of the detail regarding the meetings. Action minutes merely report the actions taken.
The reasoning put forth for this change is that video of council meetings and audio and video of council meetings and commission meetings is sufficient if people want to find out what took place at a meeting.
The Oro Valley Town Council held an open hearing on this at last night's council meeting.
Guess what? The video and audio recording of the meeting failed? So much for having these be a reliable source of information.
Three citizens, Don Bristow, Alan Dankwerth, and John Musolf spoke at the meeting. They expressed their opinion that a change to action minutes is not warranted. One brought a copy of the action minutes from a City of Tucson council meeting. The entire council meeting was summarized in one-third of a page!
Guess what? Our own Oro Valley Town Council Members had never seen "action minutes." They had no idea of what they were being asked to adopt.
John Musolf spoke of the reduction in transparency in government that this change would create.
Mayor Hiremath got unglued! He told all present that his council was quite transparent in their actions and that those in town who don't think so should meet him "half-way." We have no idea what the Mayor was talking about: Half way to what? Even his fellow council members appeared bewildered by his remarks. Perhaps the Mayor simply does not understand that transparency is a concept. Your actions either are or are not such. We have no idea of where "half-way" is.
The Council decided to table the measure until they actually saw what an "action" report is! Gee. You would think that the Mayor would have thought of this before putting it on the agenda! We wonder; How many other decisions in which the Mayor has participated have been so ill-conceived?
The plan is to discuss it at the January 18 council meeting.
This meeting will be a "whopper" as the discussion of parcel F-I is also on that agenda.
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8 comments:
"Half way" reminds me of a story about a local dentist that did a root canal.
When the patient still had pain and complained, the dentist said, "I cleaned out half the decay. I thought that would suffice."
'nough said!
And we can all be sure that art's story really happened.
Mr. Cox, you are better than this little "bite" about Art....
Art is a person who states his opinions as do you.
In some ways you two are similar...strong opinions. It does not add to your bio, Mr. Cox...you are a dedicated person to OV...volunteering and such.
It is really beneath you to respond like that.
You know Ferlin, there is a lot of truth to your comment.
Art's comment is a very underhanded, thinly vailed attack on the professional conduct of a well known local dentist, who for reasons we all know cannot defend himself on this blog.
And that my friend is why I chose to respond to this comment.
I understand...how you interpredet Arts comment but still :)
I am thinking that you may not be all bad :) I actually like you and think you are intelligent and know a lot about the history of OV and a lot of The Council decisions.
Knowing that you know the PAD and its change intracasies of that...do not you see a loophole for a developer using MU designation 2E and the parcel at Tangerine and First/OV Blvd?
Where do you stand? You seem to mean the best for the community.... what is your vision :) for the residents of those neighborhoods adjacent? Do you think about that?
I think that you are "safe" in a development. Some of us....tracts...are adjacent to open land.
I thought Art's story was merely a joke.
ahh, Republican replies can be misused.... "I like to fire people...." Don Cox is a "dirty fighter" and ceases on anything....am the same :)
But let us see it for what it is: No jokes are excused; Don Cox ceased the opportunity to dinegrate Art....small victory, me thinks.
Hi Ferlin.
I appreciate your positive comments.
It may interest you to know that prior to the P&Z meeting on the Tangarine/RV property, I expressed my concern to an attorney that we were being asked to make a decision that was really a legal decision on the language in the RV PAD. He was not firm in his response to me but I think that is where the decision will ultimately be made. Void of that kind of a determination, in my opinion there is great risk involved to the purchaser of the property if that is their intended end use. I am not an attorney but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express once.
At the last P&Z meeting I also raised the question of size of the property as it relates to being designated as MU. MU will not work, in my opinion, on a piece of property that is small. In my mind I don’t see it working on either of the two properties you mentioned. An apartment complex and a Circle K, is not MU….in my opinion.
I have also done some research on the property values in the Villages of LaCanada. The Villages are immediately south of the Beztak complex at LaCanada and Lambert. Other than the 7 or 8 homes that immediately abut the southern property line of Beztak in the Villages, there is no indication that the apartments had any effect on property values, contrary to what Conny posted numerous times. And after the commercial development was constructed on the SW corner of the same intersection, and the neighbors to the south and west expressed serious concern during the approval process, I ran many comparative market studies and found no impact.
And as presented, there is no more crime in a 250 unit apartment complex than there is in a 250 home subdivision. Our (OV) crime appears to be more closely associated with retail centers.
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