Although I don’t think I’ll be doing much posting about non-contiguous cities in OC, something’s a brewin’ down in Surf City and a pretty rancid odor has wafted northward and reached our Fullertonian nostrils. What’s happening is a saga that should be an instructive reminder to us, and, alas, is far too typical of the prevailing attitudes within city halls everywhere.
The story is told in some detail over at the Red County blog by it’s proprietor, Chip Hanlon.
It happens that in 2002 the good folks of HB passed a charter amendment to require that the City allocate 15% of its annual budget to infrastructure. And naturally the bureaucrats in City hall have been ignoring the mandate ever since. Apparently they are counting debt service and other items as “infrastructure” in a way nobody ever intended. Millions of bucks are being deliberately diverted from city infrastructure.
And also, naturally, the HB City Attorney has cooked up a load of legal bullshit to back up the city staff’s self-serving interpretation of what the charter amendment really means.
Read the rest of “The Huntington Beach Lesson:Us Versus Them”
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