This past year Truth for (A) Change has unearthed quite a bit of information about the extent to which favoritism pervades our City Hall.  The most blatant examples were Flywater-Gate "Park" and Flywater Prequel.  Even with the departure of the city administrator last year, vestiges of the old order can still be found where favoritism is concerned. 
  Last fall, for example, the City's favorite developer grabbed up a couple of the sewer connections remaining for property here.  He paid nothing for these connections and went on his merry way.  When a "less important" property owner here went to City Hall recently for the same purpose, she was told that in order to reserve a sewer connection, she would have to pay $10,000 in SDC's. However, she was told at the same time not to worry, that there were 2500 open sewer connections, plenty for her to have one anytime she needed it.  The staff person who told her that was the same staff person who received a letter from the City planner in 2008, advising that there were only 1200 connections available.  And that was actually an exaggeration when you do the math detailed in that same letter.  The real number was closer to 1,000.  At this juncture we really don't know what the number is since the city has been releasing sewer connections right and left since the 2008 letter.
  More recently, at the end of July a notice went out from City Hall regarding a zone change public hearing that was scheduled for late August.  When records in connection with this hearing were requested from the Deputy Recorder, she responded that all she had was a map.  However, when the request was escalated to the Mayor, her response was quickly corrected and public documents, in the hands of City Hall since early June, were made available.  It was on the basis of a review of those records, that were pitifully incomplete and inaccurate, that pressure was put on the developer by the City to withdraw the application.  Who is it that is supposed to review these applications prior to noticing the public about them?   
  And who can forget the Council unanimously appointing Tom Anderson to the budget committee for another term at the Council meeting on 2/19/09.  Every council member who voted, with the possible exception of Councilor Hayes, had been present at the budget meeting on 5/12/08 where Mr. Anderson boasted in public about how, as mayor, he had refused to comply with FEMA's request for enforcement of the city's floodplain ordinance.  The refusal to comply kept the floodplain in Shady Cove from being secured against potential flooding; this while Mr. Anderson's own residence was on FEMA's list of non-compliant properties, as he admitted in the 5/12/08 meeting.  To date the City has spent well in excess of $143,000, including legal (Rich), engineering (Marquess) and consulting (Public Works Management), to rescue our community from the threat of suspension from the federal flood insurance program.
   As evidence that Mr. Anderson's FEMA debacle was not an isolated incident but instead represented a pattern of poor judgment, prior to the 2/19/09 council meeting Mayor Holthusen was given a recording of a planning commission meeting in the fall of 2007 in which Mr. Anderson urged the commission to go ahead with an illegal public hearing, demonstrating the kind of cavalier attitude toward due process at City Hall that has now put the City solidly in the middle of a serious and problematic situation with the sale of City property to Flywater, LLC.  (See Flywater-Gate "Park")  Yet after all this, our new council has still seen fit to sanction the re-appointment of this individual to another three years of budget responsibility.  It wasn't as if there were not enough qualified applicants for the open committee positions.  The choice was simply made by the Council to once again favor an old friend; and Flywater-Gate expands to Budget Committee-Gate, and the favoritism pattern now spills on to our newly elected Council.