Great drama!
Last week’s (Monday, February 11, 2013) city council agenda has item 13A that is a proposed ordinance. It is the result of a citizen petition that seeks to stop the building of the ball park and the tearing down of city hall unless approved by the voters. The ordinance would:
- Repeal the provisions that allowed the city manager “to establish construction guidelines to erect a baseball stadium …”
- Forbid the mayor or any other person or entity to prepare for the demolition of city hall
- Only allow the demolition of city hall after an affirmative vote in the May 2013 city election
Don’t hold your breath. The city has already entered into a $40 million dollar contract to build the new stadium. It has allocated another $10 million dollars (and contracted for most of it) for engineers, designers, and for other services.
While neither the petition nor the proposed ordinance address the acquisitions of property and the construction services that the city is using to setup new facilities as a replacement for city hall we should be aware that they have already contracted for over $66 million (while they told us it would cost $33 million).
Dissolving these contracts will cost money, regardless of the will of the people.
I predict that we will hear a lot of discussion about how we cannot go back. “The die is cast” will be the theme.
I believe that the petition was submitted and certified in early September, 2012. Council took actions to approve the ball park and the tearing down of city hall weeks afterwards. Council deliberately held off bringing this ordinance forward until they had committed the money.
I don’t know how city council will handle this. I do anticipate that the ones standing for election might find a way to be absent during the vote so that they can later claim that they were not part of this sham.
If they do manage to pass part of it they will do so already planning to have city hall torn down before the May election, thus subverting the petition.
Once again for the record I favor the idea of the ball park and thank the organizers that bought the team. Tearing down city hall is another matter. It has proven to be very expensive.
We deserve better
Brutus
elpasospeak 