Page 7 - Sanger Herald 5-3-18 E-edition

SANGER HERALD 7A THURSDAY, MAY3, 2018
Measure S Citizens Oversight Committee falls victim to 'Murphy's law'
Members of the Measure S Citizens Oversight Committee at the May 1 meeting , L-R, Tony Gonzales, JoAnn Mares, Sue Simpson, James Miser and Melissa Griggs.
By Dick Sheppard
Sanger Herald
The terms of three members of the Measure S Citizens Oversight Committee, Tony Gonzales, JoAnn Mares and Sue Simpson will end on June 30.
The city is asking for applicants to replace the three.
Mares officially ended her term on the committee a little early by resigning at the Tuesday evening meeting, announcing she will be moving to northern California.
Gonzales and Simpson, after this Tuesday's chaotic and confusing meeting, may not mind staying home on the first Tuesday evening of every month.
There is an old adage known as "Murphy's law" that says, "Anything that can go wrong will go wrong."
The opening and closing gavel and the Pledge of Allegiance went well. But what happened in between was difficult to understand at times and difficult to report in a way that makes sense to anyone who was not there.
One of the grand jury members
- you can always tell who they are because they huddle in the back of the room making notes and whis- pering to each other - when asked at the end of the meeting if he un- derstood what had happened, at the meeting replied over his shoulder as he walked away, "I may have to read about it in the paper first," or something like that.
You might have thought if you looked at the agenda ahead of time that the four most important items were:
• getting a recommendation to the city council about funding grant applications;
• reviewing the proposed fiscal years budgets for 2018-19 and 2019- 20 and making recommendations;
• approving the Measure S 10-year spending plan; and
• hearing all about the most recent Measure S income and ex- penditures.
Two of those items got pulled off the agenda before the committee could look at them, the proposed fiscal year budgets and the 10-year spending plan.
The city's financial director, Gary Watahira, said he had found some things that needed correcting before the items were ready to be reviewed.
The recommendation to the council about funding grant ap- plications didn't happen because of a myriad of misunderstandings that needed clarification.
During Watahira's review of cur- rent Measure S income and outgo, committee member James Miser, a certified public accountant, shaking his head, commented that based on the city's accounting, Measure S funds will run out by June 30, 2018.
The committee after consider- able debate finally agreed to call two special meetings on May 22. The first at 6 p.m. will be with city attorney Hilda Cantu Montoy to review a proposed ordinance deal- ing with how Measure S should be interpreted. The second at 7:30 p.m. will be to review the budgets and expenditure plan.
The committee may wind up holding a third meeting to make those recommendations for ap-
proval of grant applications.
The agenda item for the Tuesday meeting recommended the commit-
tee consider funding:
• the police department's GREAT
program with $99,200;
• SAM Academy with $83,375;
and,
• Boys & Girls Club with $33,280. It also recommended turn-
ing down applications from NUE P.A.T.H. and Young Life Central Cal. Those recommendations came from a subcommittee that said those two applicants did not meet the intent of the grant and were not within the scope of the grant program guidelines.
That triggered another brouhaha because only the subcommittee members had seen all the grant applications, not the entire commit- tee and only half of the subcom- mittee members had reviewed the answers to questions submitted
to SAM Academy and the Boys & Girls Club.
Jerry Valadez, CEO of Sam Academy wanted a do-over because he didn't think the questions were
relevant and there wasn't sufficient time to answer them in detail.
The committee talked about but didn't act on making a recommen- dation that the city council approve setting aside $200,000 for the grant program in the next fiscal year.
No one on the committee or the city council liaison, mayor pro tem Eli Ontiveros, seemed to know if the $19,000 left over from this fis- cal year's grant program should be included in the $200,000 or added to it.
The meeting was reminiscent of the old Keystone Cops, Three Stooges and Bud Abbott and Lou Costello movies where nothing seemed to go as planned but it all worked out in the end and it was funny.
It remains to be seen whether all will work out in the end with Measure S and it's not likely it will turn out to be funny, whatever the result.
The reporter can be contacted by email at sangerherald@gmail.com or by phone during office hours at the Herald at (559) 875-2511.
Dick Sheppard/Sanger Herald
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