On August 15th I posted a story whose headline read: Mission Viejo’s Investment Advisory Commission votes 5-0 not to monetize “cell” sites. In simple English we are talking about selling off some of our current city cell tower contracts with providers such as AT&T, Sprint and Verizon.
Juice readers. One commissioner, whom I shall not name at this time, left that meeting with me repeating my testimony that we have over $50 million dollars in the bank. To paraphrase him he added that that sum is growing faster than we can spend it. He’s right. That said, there is no urgency to sell a city asset which currently is a “cash cow.”
In that “emergency” meeting, as the commission opposed the original proposal, it was discussed that they consider the possible sale of six “high risk” contracts of the requested 22 proposed sites.
In that August meeting commissioner Duncan stated “you factor when you have a cash flow problem..it would not be prudent to go down this road.”
At that following city council meeting Treasurer/Assistant City Manager Irwin Bornstein told the council that he would come back with a proposal in October that may require the addition of a few other cell tower sites to help “sell” the package.
An interesting assessment from Treasurer Irwin Bernstein when he stated that “selling leases is not the best way to fund CIP’s” adding “if necessary you could borrow at five percent of take money out of our reserves.”
Folks. This proposed action is purely “politically driven.” There is no need for this cash other than to create a pot of funds, some of which may end up in a Swift Boat mailer in the November city council election.
While October is still two weeks away, the city is calling for another “special” or “emergency” meeting of this Commission, for this coming Tuesday, September 23rd, at 3 p.m. This is necessary in order to present their report at the October 6th city council meeting.
However, the time required to do a proper “net present value” analysis of a million dollar plus proposal should take at least three business days. These five commissioners are not sitting by the pool waiting for the phone to ring to jump through hoops as they are charged with watching out for our investments. As of now we do not know when Treasurer Bornstein will present his analysis and specific cell tower contracts under consideration for their review prior to the meeting. Are they simply being asked to rubber stamp the proposal to enable the council majority to “fast track” this sale?
email reply:
Larry, maybe they intend to use the same kind of process as they did with the Rose Parade float. The deal is already wrapped up and the public meeting, contract signing and formal announcement is just for public consumption.
Seems like our city council is becoming worse that the Mafia, (but not nearly a smart.)
Larry
Please add this to your comment section on this article.
“The sale of Mission Viejo cell sites is nothing more than a raid on the
city treasury. Have we not seen what these financial swindlers have
done by creating out present financial crisis.
This raid is even more blatant—it is nothing more than a two
candidate raid on the city treasury to get campaign funds for the up
coming city council election. It goes like this–sale–money to
ATS–money to Ury?Atkinson campaign funds.”
Grover Cleveland