I had written this before Train wreck and now publish it as background information.
In Catch me if you can I wrote that city council was up to something that did not look good.
An agenda item had no backup material attached to it but the agenda item indicated that the city was going to introduce an ordinance that would allow the city to “convey” two acres of land to the railroad.
I reviewed the video of the city council meeting to see what they were doing. It was item 4A on the regular agenda and was listed right after the consent agenda. The item was brought up, no discussion or explanation was given, the vote was taken, and the item passed unanimously.
Here they introduced an ordinance and had absolutely no discussion about it whatsoever. They did not even read it out loud.
No one from the public spoke or asked questions. That is probably because they moved the city council meeting from the old city hall to the main library and most of us did not know where the meeting was.
You can see the video here (at about 54 minutes in). Select the April 2, 2013 city council meeting.
The are up to something and they want to keep it quiet.
We deserve better
Brutus
elpasospeak 
So what was the ordinance?
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Here is a link to the attachment:
ordinance
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Doing the math and considering the 600K the RR is adding, it looks like an even swap unless the appriased land per foot are not correct? Any further comment?
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Actually, I think it ends up with the railroad paying more.
The secrecy, the lack of definition, the blank check, the unknowns about the real values, the closing of 16 crossings without public input still bother me.
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