The Glendale City Council typically meets in workshop session every two weeks on a Tuesday afternoon at 1:30PM. It is also televised on Glendale’s Channel 11, which only works if you have Cox cable service and live in Glendale. It is also available online at www.glendaleaz.com.
This is the busiest time of year for any city council as it decides where to allocate resources (revenues) for the coming year. Money in local government is power and each department fights to retain or grow its part of the pie(chart). It will be interesting to see who the gorillas are this year.
What can we expect this Tuesday? Several important items are up for discussion, some of which will be discussed in
open session and some of which will be discussed in the non-public, executive session. First up in the open session will be the periodic legislative update. There should be discussion (I would hope) on the state’s attempt to take away cities’ construction sales tax. This issue is huge and if the state prevails, look for every city (including Glendale) to try to find ways to mitigate this loss which could be substantial.
Next up will be Council Items of Special Interest on the Police and Fire budgets. Making it to a workshop
agenda is interesting in and of itself. Last week Councilmember Chavira called for such a discussion and his suggestion met with deafening silence by the rest of Council. Yet here we are, a week later, and it has made its way to a workshop. Even more curious, at the previous council’s January 8, 2013 meeting, it was scheduled to vote approval to take actions to balance both department budgets. Instead a motion was made and approved by a majority of council (I was not one) to place all actions on hold until the appointment of a permanent city manager. There is no permanent city manager…yet…but like an unruly stepchild, the issue is before the new council. Hmmmm…
Then there are the six items listed on the council’s executive session agenda. Three of them are hot topics. One is consultation with the newly hired external auditor with a price tag of $200,000; another is that council is to give the 
City Manager and City Attorney direction regarding arena management (don’t forget Beacon Sports’ fee of $100,000) and the Coyotes; and the last of the trio is to resolve the compensation package for the former City Attorney and I assume, the Acting City Attorney as well. The first two items deal with contracts and the third with personnel. All, unfortunately, are legitimate topics of private discussion.
It would be extraordinary if council resolved the Coyotes issue in Esession but, the NHL will first sell the team to whomever and then the council will decide if the Coyotes stay or go when it makes its decision about the arena management contract. Don’t expect any news on the Coyotes issue from Glendale today or anytime in the very near future.
On Monday, April 1, the city will host its first of two community meetings on the city budget. I plan to go and learn the “media line” that will be used to sell it to the community this year.
Last week the council met to discuss what direction to take regarding the correspondence from former City Attorney Craig Tindall. First, Mr. Tindall has only been removed from his position by the Council…he has not resigned his employment with the city. The letter specified a number of “demands” from Mr. Tindall in return for his resignation of employment including compensation of more than $125K (I don’t remember the exact amount but it was mentioned that this is for his accrued sick and personal time as a longtime employee of the City of Glendale), covering his expenses for legal conventions/meetings that he is committed to prior to his change in status with the city and retention of technology (this was discussed back and forth amoung the council members and I don’t believe anyone really knew what this covered. The Vice Mayor thought it was for his cellphone and the associated telephone number with that device.)
The council did vote 5-2 to offer Mr. Tindall his demands with the stipulation that the compensation be spread out over 6 months and during that time if the council needed to discuss legal items with him (where he might be the only one with knowledge of the matter) that he would be willing to meet with them. (CM Alvarez and the Mayor voted NO). The acting City Attorney would make the proposal to Mr. Tindall and they wanted his response by today or tomorrow. (Mr. Tindall also requested letters or reference from the City Council).
I was very surprised to see this session broadcast over Glendale 11 last week.