The AJ Mine and Public Process

So this is it…..my last blog! Sorry for not posting anything for awhile. Now I am about out the door. Monday night my resignation is effective and Katherine Eldemar steps in. But I get to yell and scream a few more times before that happens.

One of those times was this past Wednesday night at Finance Committee. It was all set up to be a nice boring meeting [see the Agenda] We had a few small requests which we funded by shifting money from the Better Capital budget which had a few dollars left. We rejected the JEDC 125K supplemental request unanimously – saying, very seriously, it was more important to preserve the budget reserve.

All well and good, but here’s where the fun starts. Mr. Sanford said he wanted to add an additional item for our consideration – 250K to start laying the groundwork for the AJ mine. Mr. Sanford had just moments before spoken about the importance of preserving (and increasing) the budget reserve……until he proposed to take a quarter million out of it for the mine. [Oh, and by the way, the Manager said if we passed this he would need to come back to the Assembly to ask for a new staff position].

Last Monday the Committee of the Whole had heard the presentation of the AJ Mine Advisory Committee. Here is their Report. As the Minutes show, the only action we took was to “receive” the report, thank the committee and declare we needed to discuss this further at future COW meetings. Going slow was the watch word.

So here at the Finance Committee meeting Mr. Sanford proposes to amend next year’s budget to add 250K “for the AJ Project.” Note the process. By just making a motion in Committee, there is no notice to the public in the agenda that this is going to be discussed. Even more offensive to public process is that by including dollars in the budget, there never has to be a public hearing. It is folded into the whole city budget. No appropriation ordinance. No public input. No deliberation. Just a done deal.

The vote was interesting. They Mayor was not present. Mr. Stone had to step down for conflict of interest. So there are seven of us. Ms. Becker, Ms. Crane and Mr. Doll all support Mr. Sanford’s request. Ms. Danner and Mr. Dybdal join me in opposition. While the majority of those present supported the request, you need a majority of the full Assembly—five votes. So the motion fails.

The AJ Mine is an issue of huge importance and interest to the community. I have no idea whether eventually I would have supported going forward or not. We just received the report this week. I thought it was good to declare that we needed more OPEN discussion in COW.

Sorry about going out with a rant. But this ticked me off. In my opinion it was a gross violation of the public process for an issue of HUGE public interest... an attempt to slip something in the back door when nobody was looking. I am proud to be a part of blocking that effort.