City Council Meeting 4/2/2008

While I don't mean to scoop ScandalMonger, I am going to report a little on tonight's City Council meeting. We knew it was going to be a hot one, that's for sure. On the Agenda were two hot items, both relating to apartments. I specifically went to speak against Agenda #32, a zoning change for property at the northwest corner of Centennial and Valley from a Planned-Use Development to R3, or apartments. When I handed in my card, it was mentioned that the requestor was asking the item be removed from the agenda. Basically, they had at least three of the five votes against and with all three running for Mayor next year passage wasn't likely, so they are most likely going to the original zoning, which is for condos, or waiting until a later time.

However, the real hot issue was agenda item #2 - the Site Plan Review for the parcel at Centennial and Revere. The land was already hard-zoned R3 and to not pass it would violate the Open-Land Development Agreement. Basically, the city would be sued by Pardee Homes. The City Attorney basically said she couldn't find any justification to disregard the OL-DA other than the citizens were mad.

About 50 people stood up to speak against it. The Mayor and Council both said they had never seen so many people turnout. Some were a little crazy, some were very methodical and presented logical arguments. In the end, the citizens of El Dorado's gripe is with Pardee Homes and they need to file a class action lawsuit against Pardee. The City Council's hands were tied. If they voted against it, the city would be sued and Pardee would have come after the city for legal fees. We already pay they highest tax rate per assessed value of any municipality in the Valley. It was much less raucous than I thought it would.

The vote went exactly as I thought - 3 -2. Mayor Pro-Tem Robinson and Councilwoman Buck voted against. Councilwoman Buck's vote was purely a self-preservation move. She lives in El Dorado and is running for Mayor. Prior to this, she didn't find an apartment project she didn't like. Poor Councilwoman Smith. She basically sealed her political fate tonight, but did the right thing. People won't understand it, though, which is sad.

What I did notice, though is that our mayor is a jerk. He was rude to people and talked down to them. Now don't get me wrong - people were sometimes out of line, but you let them make fools of themselves and don't look like the bad guy. I can't believe he's been in office nearly 12 years. What a schmuck.

That one agenda item took nearly 2.5 hours to listen to all the public comments. The rest of the meeting went pretty fast. The next showdown is next Wednesday at the Planning Commission. Basically, Pardee wants to add two more parcels totalling nearly 1,100 MORE apartments for the adjoining parcels. Should be quite the showdown because the troops are now mobilized.