This week’s City Council meeting is packed with interesting, diverse issues - at least interesting to the 20 of us who pay attention to City government.
Usually these meetings are mostly filled with mundane, routine items, along with one or two controversial land-use hearings.
But this week the City Council will discuss a cornucopia of items, including:
1. Making “camping” in trailers and RVs unlawful, or at least defining the terms better for the occasional enforcement purposes. Anyone know what is the local Wal-Mart's policy towards camping?
2. Authorizing $410,134 for acquisition and site clearing costs to purchase County land on Hicks Lane and Eaton Road which will serve as the future site of Fire Station 7. This step is further validation that the City is preparing for growth in northwest Chico.
3. Discussing Councilor Mary Flynn’s request to create an ad-hoc Downtown Study Group for a specified period of time. As part of the General Plan update, a Downtown Element will already be completed, which would involve a few community hearings and stakeholder interviews. The question before the City Council is whether they want to hire the General Plan subconsultant, Downtown Solutions, to conduct additional services related to downtown planning.
4. Discussing whether the City should add the "requirement of a 'planning background' when appointing several of the City of Chico’s Planning Commissioners.” Personally, I don’t think implementing additional requirements is worth the trouble. The City’s planners conduct analysis and make recommendations. Developers and their planners present their case to the City staff, appointees, and eventually the City Council. I see no reason why there should be a requirement to supposedly “professionalize” appointees.
5. At Mayor Andy Holcombe’s request, the Council should definitely consider additional alternatives to the General Plan Advisory Committee (GPAC). The Council recently appointed nine GPAC members with one alternate. It makes sense to appoint several alternates now, rather than just one alternate, in case more than one GPAC member drops out due to the significant time commitment the committee service requires. If the City Council adds more alternates, I suspect many of them will be women considering some of the criticism they've received about the initial appointments lacking more women.
And most importantly, the City Council will make the important decision to start 2008 with a bang – by voting to cancel the first regularly scheduled Council meeting in January of 2008, which happens to fall on New Years Day.
Who wants to attend a meeting on New Years Day? I'd love to see a Councilor fight to keep this regularly scheduled meeting. This person would be the most unpopular person at City Hall - a definite party pooper.
Today's Scrabble word is gorget, a piece of armor for the throat.
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