Chris Berry On The Net

I’ve been waiting for an outpouring of anger and disbelief in the editorial pages and the blogs for the last several days, and it’s amazing to me that it hasn’t materialized. Am I the only one who finds it hard to believe that our elected members of the city council recently voted to reject a highly publicized proposal without being allowed to read it first? What is the point of electing council members in the first place if they aren’t permitted to have access to the information required to make an informed decision on our behalf?

Until this came to light, I don’t think anyone had any idea that council was voting on major proposals with only a briefing to guide their decisions. This puts an incredible amount of power in the hands of the city manager, since she is free to spin her briefings to produce whatever outcome suits her personal agenda. Without access to the actual proposals, council members have no way of knowing whether they are being spun or not. It pretty much defeats the purpose of having an elected council.

Our city manager insists that the policy of restricting access to this kind of information is designed to protect confidentiality, and to ensure that the city is able to negotiate from a position of strength. These are valid points, but if our council members can’t be trusted with important information, why not do away with them altogether? If we intend for the city manager to wield this kind of power, then we could streamline the process by simply allowing her to make all the major decisions without requiring a rubber stamp from the council.

Ms. Burcham insists that the reason the DRI sponsored Market proposal was rejected was that it did not conform to the RFP guidelines. If this is the case, why hasn’t the same standard been applied in the past? When the city issued the amphitheater RFP, it specifically called for a portion of the construction cost to be paid by the respondents. The proposal by Red Light Management did not include any investment in the project on their part. On that basis alone, it should have been deemed non-conforming. Instead, the city entered into closed door negotiations with Red Light and signed a contract for a feasibility study on the basis of their non-conforming response. The city now claims that it cannot negotiate with DRI without giving others a chance to submit responses to a revised RFP. If this is the case, why wasn’t a revised amphitheater RFP required before negotiating with Red Light?

This entire episode brings up another interesting point. Why does the city seem to have such a difficult time attracting conforming responses to high-profile RFPs in the first place? Requests for proposals for projects including the Market Building, the Amphitheater, Countryside, and Rockledge have all been ignored by private developers willing to invest their own money. Something is terribly wrong with the process. Either our city officials have no understanding of what constitutes an economically viable project, or the there is a major problem with the way the RFPs are being written. In either case, it’s a problem that deserves more council involvement instead of less.