Cohen Barnes owns a building in downtown DeKalb under the name “The Bandit’s Castle, LLC.” So he’s a bandit who bought a castle. Is this like the tv shows where the psychos leave little clues of their crimes? The imagination runs wild. The thing with bandits is that, by definition, they belong to gangs. This…
Tag: city council
Noreiko worries about frozen pipes, just not yours
I’m still digesting the DeKalb city council’s goal-setting session from earlier this week. The alderman from the Fifth Ward, Kate Noreiko, was pushing to build a new DeKalb Municipal Building instead of renovating the one we have. She says she thinks it’s unsafe, though she provided no foundation for this belief. Part of Noreiko’s argument…
DeKalb can become “business friendly” when this city manager is gone
DeKalb city council had another goal-setting session Tuesday evening. It was a good session, as was last month’s, but at one point I had to laugh, and it was during the perennial make-DeKalb-more-business-friendly discussion. I dearly wish more council members truly understood that friendliness is impossible under city manager Anne Marie Gaura. Unless you are…
Mayor’s statement about DeKalb Public Library’s tax promises
Mayor Smith came out this week in support of calls for DeKalb Public Library to keep its 2015 promises to repay taxpayers, and says he is confident the DKPL board “will do the right thing.” Related: DeKalb County Online: DeKalb Public Library and its property tax promises City Barbs: Going deeper on DeKalb Public Library’s…
City of DeKalb does not want you to come to this meeting
Tonight is a special meeting of the DeKalb city council. Unlike all other council meetings, this meeting will not be recorded on video. That’s because the city does not know how to video-record meetings outside of council chambers, and council is not meeting in chambers tonight, even though this is the only city meeting scheduled.…
Sorry, Mayor Smith. DeKalb’s city attorney works for the city manager, not you
Sometime during the six-hour-long regular city council meeting last Monday, the mayor asserted that the city attorney works for the city council. This is incorrect information, and the real story must be understood NOW to help people understand why the city might have just placed potential litigation with the county on the table. Exhibit A:…
Reasons to allow the city manager’s contract to expire
City council is expected to vote tonight on a resolution to “amend” city manager Anne Marie Gaura’s employment agreement, which currently expires at the end of this year. My main concern with the vote itself is that it involves the removal of the expiration date from the contract, even though the DeKalb Municipal Code says…
Handling of DeKalb city manager’s contract renewal is an ugly bit of manipulation — and inconsistent with the ordinance as well
Anne Marie Gaura’s employment agreement with City of DeKalb expires at the end of 2017. That is, it expires unless a resolution presented as a contract “amendment” gets passed by city council on Monday. They’ve placed the item as a resolution to amend the employment agreement on Monday’s council meeting agenda. But it is not…
DeKalb’s growth in personnel expenses
There’s another special city council meeting, specifically a budget meeting, set for this evening. It’s apparently a follow-up of what they discussed last week. On Thursday, the council held a joint meeting with the finance advisory committee to outline a proposed 5 percent reduction in city department budgets for fiscal 2018. This equates to nine…
Anatomy of DeKalb’s proposals for a sales tax hike
That’s not a typo in the headline. There are, I believe, two proposals for a sales tax hike of one cent for fiscal 2018. One comes from DeKalb city administrators, the other from the city’s finance advisory committee (FAC). Here’s the proposal staff put into the draft budget: Sales tax for hiring police officers? Sales…