HomeMy WebLinkAbout9/7/2005 - STAFF REPORTS (44) Dana L. Stewart and James McKinley, Palm Springs — (760) 864-4181
Welcome back, Councilmembers and staff,
We hope you had time to refresh and to reflect over the holidays. We hope
you've returned with a renewed sense of achieving common ground with the
concerns of your constituents. In particular, we hope you have reconsidered your
support of the bill before the state legislature that would disenfranchise the voters
of Palm Springs, SB 557. We want our right to vote on the sale of our property,
our water treatment facility. You keep treating this sale like it was a forgone
conclusion. IT IS NOT. You are short-sighted in your proposal to approve a
short-term extension to Veolia (Item 2L). You will need them a lot longer than
until October 7th to address the public on this issue.
Meanwhile, your forgone conclusion as to how to use the money from the illegal
sale of our property, is now a task force that Mayor Oden told the state
legislature was already formed. Again, the city twists to the new, ugly, massive
projects rather than listening to the decades of begging to rebuild infrastructure—
(like curing the stinking sewer smells in our restaurant district), preparation for
disaster response (we're trapped with every downpour), innovative restoration is
agonizingly slow (like the Spanish Inn), and using successful examples of
deadbeat landlord fees and land conservancy fees to buyers, to refill city coffers,
rather than for their intended purposes. We sure hope that there has been a sea-
change on this council during the holidays and it will NOT be "business as usual".
On item 2S, you have the audacity to award yet another contract to the destroyer
of Araby Cove, G&M Construction. The owner, the husband of Mrs. Marantz, our
Planning Commission Chair, is not brought to task for this, he is given a
$550,000.00 contract. Doesn't this have, at least, the appearance of collusion?
He is the one whose goons tore down the pro-Measures B & C signs.
And on item 2Y, another$200,000.00 to the Convention Center. This is after the
Million and a half dollars they picked up this winter. Where is all this money in
cost-overruns going? We still don't see solar power as a component. It is
beginning to look like a money pit. If we do not save our town from the extreme
make-overs being proposed, there won't be anything left for the conventioneers
to enjoy.
We hope that you will abandon the "scorched-earth policy" of the mass
developers for some safety-conscious, sensible, and successful solutions.
Bighorn sheep are dying. They are our"canaries in the mine". Even with their
deaths, they warn us. WE are the endangered species.
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