Although the Special Meeting originally scheduled for 4;30 PM was cancelled, the Tustin City Council may still have a busy schedule ahead.

It’s that time of year, again, as labor leaders line up for negotiations. Although councilmembers are scheduled to discuss the state of negotiations, I’ve been told the first meeting with labor has not taken place yet. These talks are probably to discuss what would be acceptable. In recent history, the police associations have been willing to change their pension plans for new hires and for all members to pay more into their retirement while foregoing raises. Changes to state law this year will mandate other changes for retirement. As far as raises go, all employees should be reminded the Chief received a 5% raise to make sure he doesn’t go elsewhere. Should the rank and file get the same?

There is only one Public Hearing which the city staff are asking to be continued. As we recall, this item was continued once before. Apparently, they haven’t stacked the deck enough in Community Development Director Elizabeth Binsack’s mind after the Fairbanks debacle. Still no draft to peruse. We would like to see this published several days before the meeting it is to be heard at as we are sure it holds the interest of more than a few of our residents.

One thing that can be said for this city council, they certainly don’t want to be bothered with the details. The rest of the agenda, save for a couple of items, consists of the consent calendar where some of the items clearly deserve discussion if not for clarity’s sake then the sake of the residents who foot the bill. Alas, I guess this is the result of having zero stipends for the boys.

Item #4, Authorization to Sell an (Housing) Authority-Owned Affordable Home, certainly deserves open discussion. The staff report recommends allowing the Authority Director to set the price and conduct closed session meetings with proposed buyers “in order to receive Commission approval” for the sale. Fine, except the public will not know any of the details of the purchase until after the fact. That includes the purchase price and proposed buyer. Surely, this should be public knowledge so we will know what we are getting and to insure the buyer is truly qualified. Apparently, the city seems to think the purchase and sale of publicly owned property should automatically be conducted behind closed doors. In this case, we think it should be in public view.

Item #6, an Agreement with Municipal Auditing Services and Approval of Resolution 13-13 should also be up for discussion. The proposed resolution would turn over public records of business licensees to a private firm (we call this outsourcing) for collection activities. According to the description, MAS would be allowed to perform collections of delinquent business licenses, audit current business licenses, and “engage in the discovery of unlicensed businesses.”

According to the staff report, the business license division consists of one employee. Rather than add staff, the city suggests outsourcing the investigation of businesses to make sure they obtain a license prior to doing business in the city. The target for these investigations is, obstensibly, the millions of dollars in lost license fees the city incurs when transient businesses such as plumbers and delivery services transact business within city limits. So, rather than rely on the past practice of concerned citizens calling in reports on errant businesses, the city has decided to hand this task over to a private collection agency at a whopping 40% commission fee. It should be noted that at least one business takes issue with their alleged witch hunt activities. Perhaps the staff should do a bit more research themselves before contracting with this company. Oh, and what happened to our RFP process. If this is a valuable contract, isn’t the city required to publish an RFP?

We have a better idea.

How about saving the commission and assigning this task to Code Enforcement officers. Tustin PD patrol could also be on the lookout for suspicious plumbers and convey that information to Code Enforcement as well. If the task is too great to assign to code enforcement, perhaps they should rethink the additional staff. Laughably, the staff report says the reason staff want to outsource this is to maintain Tustin’s “business friendly” atmosphere by insuring all businesses are correctly taxed. I doubt using a collection agency with the authority to conduct witch hunts using city resources will convey that positive feeling. The city council should send this proposal back to the drawing board.

Item #11, City of Tustin Strategic Plan 2013-2018, has been an on-again, off-again project of the city council. Discussion of this plan has taken up way to much time cosidering there is nothing new at all in this. One has to wonder if the city council actually paid for this plan considering it appears to be a template of dozens of plans of other cities and companies across the country. And, as with most strategic plans of this type, it is mostly a feel-good piece of publicity that does not address the core of issues related to the city. Although Management Partners, the true authors of the plan, did their research, they found severe issues with the city’s operations citing alienation of the school district and civility of the city council along with poor succssion planning as examples of what the city lacks. The proposed strategic plan simply says they will fix those things by being better. It should be interesting to see how fast this gets swept under the carpet after approval (Oh, come on, you know they will approve it).

Closed Session

Conference with Legal Counsel 2 each Initiation and Exposure to Litigation

Public Employee Performance Evaluation City Manager, Jeff Parker and City Attorney, David Kendig. We remind the City Council that any proposal for raises for Parker or change in services for Kendig require public discussion.

Labor Negotiations – All Public Employee Unions and Non-represented employees.

Conference With Real Property Negotiators – Three properties on Tustin Legacy MCAS property.

Public Hearings

Ordinance to Amend Hearing Officer Guidelines – Postponed to Aporil 16th City Council Meeting.

Consent Calendar

Authorization to Sell Affordable Home – Located at 14554 Newport Ave., #3 by the Housing Authority Commission.

Second Amendment to Rental Agreement – Warehouse building used by National Office Liquidators to increase the amount of space rented at market price.

Approval of Agreement With Municipal Auditing Services – To provide collection services for business licenses.

Approve Agreement For Information Technologies Services Network Migration Project– Funding was appropriated to upgrade the computer and telephone system in City Hall.

Regular Business Items

City of Tustin Strategic Plan– Approve Strategic Plan developed by Management Partners. Plan durations 2013-2018.

Removal of Commissioners From Office Upon Running For City Council – Directs staff to devise a proposal for resignatin/removal of commissioners and timetable for their replacement.