The city allowed the Meet the Candidates event without getting City Council approval. Is that provision there to protect the city?
"All public events must have prior City Council approval." Bottom Page 4
http://www.montrose-mn.com/docs/CommunityCenter-Fees-Policies.pdf#page=4
For the Montrose Mayor campaign, candidate Charlie Nelson writes in his campaign literature about the $22k spent on a report. BUT he doesn't write about the ~$110,000 wasted on a $2.5 million City Hall which he was on the Committee for or the $170,000 eventually spent on a Intersection Study. He writes that the approximately 11 Square Mile $250,000 "Alternative Urban Areawide Review" saves money but it was approved in 2009 after things had gone south. Buffalo is about 7 Sq Miles and Montrose is about 3.2. Most of the deficits from the spending on these is still on the books.
Charlie Nelson also writes that for 3 years running city staff asked for no raise in pay. 2008 average increase was about 8% for the 9 employees when Charlie and Sharon Knodel were still on the Council, none for 2009. All employees got 3% raises in 2010. Raises were recommended for 2011 but they decided to wait until they got a report from the state which was in 2012, then the city only recommended increases for 3 of the 5, the other 3 employees are in supervisory union negotiations. There were also Open Meeting Law Violations that the state issued an opinion on when Sharon Knodel was on the Council.
The city newsletter says the employees volunteered to switch from a co-pay to a high deductible plan in 2009 and that there was a reduction from 9 full-time employees. A request for information for this was submitted on the 10th and hasn't received a completion response as of the 22nd.
No comments:
Post a Comment