Closed Session Speculation

Apparently our City Council can't get through a week without a closed session. The public meetings are so light on substantive discussion that one gets the idea that--somehow--the council already got all the information it needed someplace else. For most of this week it had appeared that there would be no closed session but--WAIT!--a peek at the City website this morning shows an extraordinary closed session scheduled for tomorrow, Friday morning, at 8 a.m.


Could this have something to do with the apparent failure of the City's Baseline affordable housing project to qualify for City of Industry Funds administered by the County? (See yesterday's post here)

Maybe, maybe not. Possibly it's just getting Enhanced Affordable Development's proposal tuned up prior to Monday's February 4th "proposer's conference" at the County agency.

Still, it's curious that there will have been three noticed closed sessions to discuss "price and terms" or "terms and conditions" with the developer. And the Insider may not be the sharpest tool in the shed, but the language in the Agency NOFA (Notice of Funding Availability) is pretty hard to interpret any other way than, "No Joy for the Baseline Project".

(The document is a little hard to link to. It's behind a registration wall at the agency website. We reproduce the relevant text below)

Click to Enlarge, and Read On Below

You affordable housing junkies might want to get up early to attend the public components of the closed session. Council should take public comment before retiring to secrecy, and is required to come out afterward and announce any reportable actions taken. We assume the meeting will start and end in council chambers, but the news item above doesn't make that clear and as this is written, the official agenda is not posted on the web. Call 399-5460 to confirm place.