The Mayor gave very clear reasons why he did not feel the answer to additional payment was just a simple Yes. Most of the council seemed to feel as if they had no options; the Mayor clearly felt there were options to pursue. After asking Staff four questions, the Mayor gave these reasons for his negative voting position; First, he felt a “not to exceed” contract is just that, he said the plan was a full year late, he said the city needed the guidance of the new regulations during the annexation and didn’t have the advantage of having them, he felt that if the problems relating to the “complexity” of the plan/new regs were so difficult they should have been addressed earlier rather than getting to a stand-off, he felt that there were unintended consequences that should have been addressed by both sides.

When councilors Pokorney and Davis were “upset”, and asked how should they deal with the “repercussions”, the Mayor expressed: we need to revisit the vendor , we need to further renegotiate, we can certainly have the right of renegotiation if the vendor can, and he also expressed discomfort with moving funds around within the community development budget for fear some other needed task would not be funded.

So, I saw this as a very fiscally sound , management response. A “not to exceed” contract should be able to be renegotiated from both sides, if needed, and the vendor is exceedingly late.

There was some inference on staff and council’s part, that the full involvement of the Boards and Commissions was not anticipated, but most of the “complexity” was said to be the difficulty of changing from use-based regulations to a “form-based” plan. Surely the consultant had the expertise to anticipate that problem.

So … a lot more complex than you had time to explain.