He said it. I knew he would. It was only a matter of time. New mayor Cohen Barnes called the DeKalb city council a “team” during the last council meeting. It’s horrifying.
Tag: city
DeKalb city council voted to allow me to participate remotely in order to exclude you
As DeKalb’s city clerk, I’ve been participating in council meetings via teleconferencing since April. Then, during the July 13 committee-of-the-whole meeting, the city council, somewhat bizarrely, took a vote to allow me to teleconference. This post will explain why. Here’s the clip of part of the mayor’s introduction to the topic. (The first 4-1/2 minutes…
Charging the Water Fund for salaries in other departments is a masterpiece of nontransparency
*Note: “Departments” as used in this article should be read as shorthand for “departments, divisions, and offices.”* Take a look at this budget from DeKalb’s Finance Division: Seems pretty straightforward, right? Well, it’s not. It does not show all the wages the Finance employees get paid. This is a budget that accounts only for the…
TIF forensic assessment tells us how DeKalb operates
The promised forensic audit report (now being called a forensic assessment for some reason) of City of DeKalb’s tax increment financing funds has been released by the DeKalb County State’s Attorney’s Office. The report details miscalculations, missing documents, and other failures of due diligence occurring across the 10-year period examined. Much of the fireworks over…
Taking away the city clerk’s role in checks and balances
Jumping off my last post and recent discussion of it, I want to share a little more of the context in which I currently attempt to function as city clerk in DeKalb. This time last year, I signed and sealed some contracts and all plats, ordinances, resolutions, and licenses. Hundreds of documents crossed my desk…
As DeKalb city clerk, I feel like a punching bag
***Update: Find discussion and comments in our Facebook group .*** When I read the other day the Daily Chronicle is still calling it a “rift” in describing what’s going on between the city manager’s office and me as city clerk, I realized I have to say more than I have before. It’s no longer a…
DeKalb Park District property transfer could use another look
DeKalb Park District (DPD) passed a resolution last summer to convey park property to City of DeKalb for its new city hall. The transfer has since occurred under an intergovernmental agreement (IGA) between the two. City of DeKalb paid DPD a dollar for the property known as the Nehring building. Possibly illegally by ignoring the…
Pie is for Bureaucrats, Not Streets People
A friend of mine asked a couple weeks ago whether there is some way to calculate how much growth there’s been of bureaucrats in city government. Like many locals, I know that the DeKalb city manager has been generally allowed to spin off new departments and hire new administrators without restraint, but we’re somewhat lacking…
No, Daily Chronicle. The DeKalb City Clerk has Not Received a Raise
The compensation ordinance that will apply to our next city clerk has NOT received final approval. So there is no, or at least not yet, a “hefty raise” for the clerk as claimed by the newspaper today. It was only first reading. They only reveal this fact in the final sentence of the article. The…
DeKalb Administrators Don’t Think it’s Their Job to Enforce the Electrical Aggregation Contract the City Signed
If you participate in the City of DeKalb’s electrical aggregation program — and about 5,800 electric customers in DeKalb do — your rates should have dropped as of July 1, but they didn’t. There are two disturbing elements of this story. One is that resident Mark Charvat began making inquiries about the rate change in…