Mayor blows it with special closed session meeting
By Kathryn Reed
The South Lake Tahoe City Council on Tuesday again demonstrated its dysfunction.
Mayor Wendy David on Monday scheduled a special closed session meeting for March 6 at 5pm.
Only the mayor or a majority of the council may schedule such a meeting. David admitted she called the meeting. She did not elaborate.
The agenda said pending litigation. It’s not known what suddenly became so urgent; not even all the other council members knew.
“I’m uncomfortable with the special meeting coming up at 5 o’clock that was agendized yesterday,” Councilwoman Brooke Laine said Tuesday before the council was supposed to go into closed session for other reasons. Because she believed that special closed session was not agendized correctly she said she would not be attending that meeting.
Councilman Tom Davis as well acknowledged he had concerns about having this scheduled meeting.
Interim City Attorney Nira Doherty admitted it was not agendized correctly. Government Code mandates such notices be published on the governing body’s website, Doherty said. That didn’t happen. It was the city clerk’s job to make that happen.
The city routinely sends out meeting notices electronically. Lake Tahoe News never received the notice about the meeting in question. This begs the question about transparency, with the mayor seeming to be the leader of city secrets.
David said the meeting would be rescheduled. When is unknown. Same with why it is even warranted. Same with why the media isn’t being notified of all meetings.
The dysfunction of this City Council, and lack of competent direction (much less legal input), is EMBARASSING! This Council seems to be driven by its sense of power! There should be a provision to censure the Council for lack of due process, and hopefully SLT will get a competent and permanent City Attorney soon!
Is this the City Council that we want here in SLT? Well, this is what the people voted for. Well, that is what we get. This is an election year, and maybe we should recall the entire group, since they all seem to be self serving, NIMBY, only worried about themselves group of leaders. We need a council that cares about the citizens AND the community. They do a good job of hearing the people, but not listening. I applaud the mayor for her efforts in reaching out to the community with her “Let’s have a conversation” gatherings, but these are just a feel good thing since a lot of what is said is the same things over and over (VHRs, Snowglobe, etc). Since it appears nothing is really getting done, this just goes to show they are not LISTENING. Recall the whole group and lets get a council that cares about the people who put them there! Democracy is not a spectator sport. Get out there, get involved and VOTE! We have a pert time council and some of them are part time part timers.