Ron's Log

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January 21, 2015

There is a significant number of people in the Desert Hot Springs area who rely upon arguing that black is white, up is down, bad is good. They've tried to lie about last week's Planning Commission meeting. I expect they will try to lie about the reasons Councilmember Joe McKee sought to remove Chuck Parker from the Planning Commission, citing imaginary conspiracies and corruption. So here's a transcript of the statement made by Mr. McKee during the council meeting before the unanimous vote to remove Mr. Parker:

I apologize in advance for how long this is going to take, but we'll go through it. The meeting that took place of the Planning Commission last week was only the trigger for this action. It wasn't the only reason that it happened. During the period of time that Chuck has been on the Planning Commission especially them getting...he continuously came in and said things like "I wasn't able to read the packet" and complain about how much time he had to do that. Unfortunately, that's something that I've said a lot too. The problem is, we get anywhere between 250 and 1,000 pages of documents to go over every meeting - twice a month. That doesn't count special meetings of which during a period of time we were having every week, and we're going to start that up again. It is my responsibility to go over that documentation. I usually go over it two or three times and submit questions in advance to the city [staff] on Sundays so that they have a couple of days to work on it. That's the reason I don't ask a lot of questions in a lot of instances. Because they've already sent me a memo like they did today detailing the answers to a lot of my questions that I think the public doesn't really need to hear because a lot of them are pretty esoteric, to say the least.

The problem I have is a lot of what Mike Picardi just said. I relish conflict. I relish people discussing things and being in a position that they come to some sort of conclusion with everyone's input being in place. What we have fought as a city council in the last year is the perception of everyone else in the city and in the Coachella Valley - in the state - about Desert Hot Springs being a city that cannot get along, that gets into a position that arguments become more than personal, and that we're in a position that we lose total control of meetings. Now, I listened to the meeting after people came to me and said things like that was the worst meeting they'd seen in their lives. And these were people that had decades of experience. What I looked at was the totality of the situation; not only the fact that he several times had said that he couldn't be involved in the process because he couldn't read everything. But the fact that over and over again he would yell at people in the city offices, also, about things. Not discuss things.

[City Manager] Martín [Magaña] and I have some pretty hard discussions about things going on in the city. But I don't run around the city hall yelling at people. I don't yell at the City Attorney that something he's doing should cost him his license. Let me just say something about that. We have a City Attorney that reduced his fee from $35,000 to $25,000 and has spent most of the last two weeks trying to put out thousands of pages of documents that people have wanted to see. Even though the points that were awarded have had no people come in and ask for them to be reviewed by the reviewing committee at this point. The problem is that technically the point system had to be discussed and a document put in requesting that a person needed to appeal them 15 days after the 10th of December. Not the situation with the Planning Commission that was dealing with the CUP. By the time this Planning Commission got this situation as something that they were looking at - they were supposed to be looking at the CUP, the point system had already gone through the period of time of appeal.

Now, let's talk about transparency a little bit. The City Attorney is getting members of the Bar and other people in the cities of California and other states approaching him, asking to emulate how transparent this process has been. Is that not true? [City Attorney Quintanilla acknowledged that it was true.] You can say anything you want. Tell me a process someplace that's more transparent than this. I understand that people think in the past things haven't been transparent, but the City Council was very, I think, forthcoming in dividing the process in such a way that exactly the sort of thing that was complained about, the Mafia being involved and everything else, that that would not occur. The City Council only set up the point system. The staff - multiple staff members graded everything. The CUP was supposed to be handled by the Planning Commission. The regulatory stuff was supposed to be handled by the City Manager, making sure that all the LifeScans and everything else took place, as far as that is concerned. The reason we did this, was to avoid even the inkling of any corruption, as far as people being bought off. Now, if someone has a process that would work better than that, provide it. Don't just say it's corruption, what we've done.

Now, attack on the staff. It's real easy to do, folks. They can't fight back. They can't fight back. And one of the things I've learned in my life is if you treat people with respect and ask them questions reasonably, they'll react to you. They'll work with you. Now, one of the things that people don't realize is how small the staff is and how much stuff they're having to do now. Last year, the City Clerk had to provide 60 public information requests in a 50-week period. That doesn't sound like much. The problem is, some of those were huge. You're also in a position that 60 are only the big requests he got. And then we have people complaining about the fact that he doesn't have time to do minutes. You pile work on the person and then you yell at him because he can't do something you think is important, even though the recordings of all these Commissions and everything else are on the computers right now, are on the internet. You can listen to them in total.

Now, as far as being a rubber stamp. What rubber stamp? What rubber stamp? Multiple people, not just the three [dispensary applicants] that are in a position that were chosen, chose to lease property, buy property, start construction. Multiple people, not just one or two that we're talking about here. They took the risk as businesspeople.

Now, the problem I have with this whole process is this: I want people on that commission that are going to question things. I don't want them to be maniacs. Questioning things is okay, as far as I'm concerned. And the person I will put back into this position I will expect that. I will expect them not to get along with me on everything, but we have to be in a position that we don't have Commissions and the City Council of Desert Hot Springs looked upon as being a bunch of crazy people. And that literally is what we've been fighting for years now. Again, I don't care about dissent. If you dissent, you can say what you want. You can vote. You can try and convince other people to do what you want to. I get frustrated at times up here. Sometimes I'm successful at getting people to vote with me. A lot of times I'm not. But I don't run around with my hair on fire, when it comes down to it.

This is the way the process works, as far as I'm concerned. Now, I don't feel good about this either. I wish I didn't have to do it, but if you look at the totality of the situation, I can see no choice, as far as I'm concerned.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

Here is the audio recording:

Filed under Coachella Valley,Desert Hot Springs,Marijuana,Politics | permalink | January 21, 2015 at 06:21 PM

Comments

I think the fact that Dean Gray resigned and no TV cameras showed up, the police did not have to be called, and we were not all subjected to his loud denouncements from the podium, is a really good thing for Desert Hot Springs. The problem was pretty bad, but this fix went quickly and quietly. This is how it would have been handled in any other city. I'm thankful for what blessings we get. No need to pull him back into the spotlight based on some other imagined corruption.

Posted by: Ron's Log at Feb 1, 2015 9:52:12 AM

You need to tell more. Come clean. Expose the corruption. Simply accepting the resignation of Dean Gray and removing Chuck Parker isn't enough. They have not on,y threatened Steve Q. but others. Including stalking and smear campaigns. I am told Paul Tapia was involved in following perceived enemies of theirs. I saw Parker follow me and I was told the other was Tapia. I'm not the only one they has been stalked by your and Betts people, Mr McKee. Others have and they are coming forward. You won't be able to stop them from that, either, nor will Gray even though some are scared as I type now, as the latest is that he has obtained a Glock 9mm and perhaps without permission , a police report was filed by Gabe King about it, this has scared a few but not enough to shut them up. The Betts and McKee corruption will eventually be exposed. You can't stop that.

Posted by: Michael Harrington at Jan 30, 2015 8:28:32 PM

This was really hard for Joe. You can hear it in his voice..this should put an end to the assumptions some have been making as to why and what happened to force this decision.

Posted by: Mike Picardi at Jan 22, 2015 1:08:08 PM

Joe, you made a tough decision....one that we expect elected officials to make despite political consideration and influence. I applaud your integrity. T

Posted by: Russ Martin at Jan 21, 2015 11:46:10 PM

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