Northfield Chamber of Commerce Retail Committee members Abby Erickson (By All Means Graphics) and Nicole Maloney (Sweet Pea’s Loft / Toys and Treats) joined us for the first half of our show to rev up excitement about Crazy Daze. (Alas, I neglected to take a photo so I’ve stolen these mugshots from elsewhere.)
The rest of the time, we discussed some of our recent pet issues that help make Northfield the crazy city that it is these days.
Click play to listen. 30 minutes. You can also subscribe to the podcast feed, or subscribe directly with iTunes. Our radio show/podcast, Locally Grown, usually airs Wednesdays at 5:30 PM on KYMN 1080 AM.
Since paying the add’l $33,500 requested by ACP (Comp Plan Consultants) came up, and Jeff mentioned the exchange between the Mayor and J. Pokorney, and the Mayor did vote No; I think it’s important to add some clarifying information.
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.