By The Signal Editorial Board
It doesn’t happen often, but we admit it: The Signal Editorial Board must apologize. We were wrong.
We have to say we are sorry to our readers. In an editorial we published on March 29, we decried a back-room deal that Councilwoman Laurene Weste negotiated by herself on behalf of the city.
We criticized her for negotiating the deal on her own without any input or discussions with city staff.
She negotiated a $750,000 impact fee that would allow the developer, Serrano Development Group, to demolish what may or may not be a historic building, the old Rafters building, which served as
Newhall’s first courthouse.
The fee of $750,000 was to go to the city, while the developer would be allowed to build a five-story mixed-use development on Main Street with 78 residential units, 112 parking spaces and 5,200 square feet of retail space.
Considering what’s happened since then, we now would like to nominate Weste to be the city’s permanent negotiator. While she seemingly came up with the $750,000 fee out of nowhere, at least she negotiated money FOR the city.
Go back to the last City Council meeting on May 13 and you will see the City Council voted to reduce the amount that the city would receive — by more than half.
Yes, that’s right, they reduced the amount to $300,000.
On a motion made by Councilman Jason Gibbs, the council voted 3-0 to ask for only $300,000 to demolish the building. Voting to reduce the fee were Gibbs, Mayor Bill Miranda and Councilwoman Patsy Ayala. Marsha McLean abstained, and Weste recused herself.
The other $450,000 will apparently go to the project’s neighbor to mitigate noise caused by the project.
The city? The city gets $300,000 of the proposed original amount of $750,000.
Yes, the City Council negotiated the city’s fee down.
Sure, $450,000 is a drop in the city’s massive financial bucket — but there’s a principle at play here.
That is why we are suggesting that Weste be named as the city’s permanent negotiator, for at least doing her job and trying to get money FOR the city.
OK, so here is the disclaimer because, as we’ve learned over the past few years, satire and sarcasm are lost on a lot of people:
We don’t really think Weste should negotiate all projects on the city’s behalf. In fact, we would advocate that the city should change its practice of having council members go rogue and negotiate deals on their own. That is not what government and business people would normally call a “best practice.”
But, the record is clear — Laurene Weste cut a deal for the city with an eye toward maximizing taxpayer benefit.
The rest of the council, not so much.
