This is still 20 minutes, but I cut 75% of the hearing out.
In short, myself and Randy Staver didn’t feel the variance met the legal standard. Ed Hruska, Bruce Snyder, and Dennis Hanson, have never supported this. Mark Bilderback and Sandra Means were willing to go along with the variance. Compromise passed 7-0 so we all suck equally.
Northwest Investments (Kwik Trip) will plant fewer trees, leave West Circle Drive treeless, donate trees to RNeighborwoods. The variance request also removed power from the city forester, but we were able to restore that.
Edit, I see some video is missing so I will try to fix that.
-Rochester City Lines (RCL) General Manager Dan Holter
A business works smart and works hard to earn a profit.
Business owner Michael Wojcik
Notice a difference.
At the special meeting on December 22, 2011 the city council met to pay Dan Holter his $140,000 in taxpayer ransom. The city approved a horrible 6 month contract by a 4-2 margin. Everyone on the city council was disgusted by the contract and looked forward to awarding a new contract through open competition beginning July 1, 2012. In addition, the taxpayers of Rochester will be funding a 3% across the board increase for RCL (our staff is getting 1% increases). To the extent that is legally permissible we will consider this experience in evaluating RCL for future competitive contracts.
As much as Dan Holter is to blame for this fiasco I place a similar amount of blame on city staff for allowing us to be in a situation where a majority of the council felt we had no choice but to give into Holter’s demands. The question is why we had not negotiated with another company so as to have some leverage with RCL. A review of the entire process and transit operations is probably in order.
After the meeting Holter was stopped from making some statements by his own staff. I wasn’t there, but others were. I wish he had gone on. He also wanted to blame me for some of this and claims that I have been non-responsive. I did meet with Holter and other took his concerns back to transit staff. The problem has always been that he tends to make these silly statements like he owns the transit system. The taxpayers own the buses, streets, bus stops. RCL owns the RCL name and the garage where some buses are currently stored. We waste a bunch of staff time to debunk these statements time and time again. It was also suggested that the service would have continued to operate regardless if we had approved the contract. We were not made aware of this.
My advice to a bus driver at RCL that I spoke with after the meeting is that you further organize and perhaps make your own bid for the contract beginning in July as an employee owned bus company. I hate to see innocent victims to another’s greed.
Here is a clip of Mayor Brede and myself discussing our continuing support for the Mayo Civic Center renovation and expansion. We are asking the state for support in 2012. You can listen to my rational for support and see if it seems thought out and reasonable.
If you remember only one thing, remember that Rochester citizens will pay less by doing this project as we have outlined than if we do not.
In this video comments are made alleging wrongdoing by city staff. I am not going to comment on the video other than to say that I am sharing it because I think you will find it interesting. I will comment more after the ethics case is resolved.
1) Dennis Weestrand is still willing to profit from a business dealing in Human Sex Trafficking in Rochester. Here are my official city council meeting comments.
2) Our bus contract will be put out for competitive bidding. This is long overdue. At the council meeting there was an attempt to pander and say that the big bad federal government is making us do this. However after the pandering died down I specifically said that we should have competition for our contracts and if anyone on the council disagrees, please say so now. No one spoke, so I read that 7-0 that the city council support competitive bidding. This is not to say anything about our current operator, who I think does a very nice job. I am championing a change rates where we will pay an hourly rate instead of the current death-by-excel back and forth that kills so much staff time.