Your City Council Report

For July 27, 2010

By Katy (ADQ) Miessner

Last night’s council meeting had a theme: DOWNTOWN!

DOWNTOWN PART I

We can forget all our troubles, forget all our cares and go
Downtown, things'll be great when you're
Downtown, don't wait a minute more
Downtown, everything's waiting for you.

Council approved unanimously a loan agreement of $1.16 million to Domus Development, to support their proposal to convert the historic Masonic Temple (built in 1917) and the old (1872) Vallejo Municipal building, next to each other on Marin between Virginia and Jeffry Alley into affordable artists’ lofts (“Temple Art Lofts”). Yes, yes people are already saying: how can a bankrupt city be giving loans to developers? These complainants obviously have not read Paul Norberg’s excellent article “Fund Accounting for Dummies” here on VIB. It’s our General Fund that’s bankrupt, not the Housing and Redevelopment Funds to be used for this project. Why there are so many pots of money that have so many restrictions is a different story—that’s another discussion which requires a white paper. In the meantime, the City of Vallejo has very stringent legal obligations on how they can spend these funds which are clearly designated for affordable housing. But, since these funds are considered “local matching”, using them could bring in the State and Federal dollars that require local matching funds, increasing what we already have.

  Tired of the negative publicity

By Cathy Jensen

7/28/10

This past weekend I had the unpleasant opportunity to see KPIX Channel 5 broadcast yet another negative story about Vallejo, specifically citing the fact that at some times during the weekend – the city has only 6 police officers on duty (and no canine teams...and no SWAT teams – yadda-yadda-yadda).  The story ran at least twice on Saturday and again on Sunday morning.

While I was crafting my angry response to the Program Editor at Channel 5 – including links to many of the positive Facebook websites about Vallejo; I realized that those websites are really just “preaching to the choir”...and perhaps it is time to take another approach to all of this negative publicity.
Consider the following:

  Vallejo Sanitary Flood Control District drops investments in Septic Tank

7/27/10

By Paul Norberg--retired CFO

July 27, 2010--VSFCD Meeting--6 PM

Consent Item 6c

I am concerned about the investment losses experienced by the district and the impact they will have on future operations.

It appears that you have lost at least $6.5 million on your investments. $1.2 million on CIT Group, $310,000 on AIG, $3.6 million on Lehman Bros and $1.5 million on Washington Mutual. The Washington Mutual was not listed on the Investment Activity report included with this package but it was disclosed back in October 08. I wonder if there are any more losses that I haven’t noted. During this same time the City of Vallejo with a cash and investment portfolio much larger than the Sanitation District had no investment losses to the best of my knowledge.

All of these losses raise several questions:

Nichelini Speaks

7/27/10--The recent policy implementation of two Vallejo police officers per patrol car has been the source of some discussion and confusion. Is this really a needed safety measure? or merely an implementation of further “Pay or Die” tactics by Vallejo Police designed to reduce the number of patrols? Of course Vallejo's police would like to see citizens vote for a tax increase that will support their services and the raises promised them in the current contract. This fact gives rise to all sorts of suspicions as to motivations etc.

Rather than jump to conclusions VIB contributor Bob Schussel went to the source. Below is a brief exchange between Vallejo Police Chief Nichelini and Schussel (published with permission) that will hopefully give the reader some insight and allow them to better draw their own conclusions.

Marc Garman—Editor VIB