Mayor Berg You Disgraced Your Office Last Night

Mayor Roger Berg's behavior was deplorable and disgraceful. It was not fitting for a Mayor. Please listen to the podcast. It is important that you know how your elected officials, our public servants, behave towards citizens and others.

The Mayor started by telling a citizen during public comments that since she started to mention an item that was on a later agenda item she was not allowed to comment during the public comments portion of the meeting.

The Brown Act requires Mayor Berg to allow the public to speak during public comments on issues that may or may not be on the agenda. He had no right to interrupt her and tell her to sit down.

Later, when the citizen rose again to speak during the agenda item, she tried to finish what she had been prevented from saying during the public comments. Once again Mayor Berg interrupted her and told her she could only speak about the agenda item. Once again he told her to sit down. At some point in the meeting he even threatened to have her removed. 

Mayor Berg didn't save his rudeness just for this citizen. He was disrespectful to a representative from the Air Quality District who was there to file a comment against the new 5.2 million square foot distribution center the city council was voting to authorize on land south of SR 60 next to the proposed Potrero interchange.

The AQ representative told the council there will be no other distribution center like this one in the state and that the amount of pollution and damage to our environment would be significant. The Mayor called him a bureaucrat and questioned his motives. 

Mayor Berg's colleagues didn't escape the Mayor's attacks. He berated two of his fellow councilmen who asked for more time to consider the Air Quality District's concerns and concerns of the public. 

Why does Mayor Berg need these warehouses so bad? Because the city needs their money to complete the interchange project. If this goes through you can kiss good bye any chance of an open air mall, or any mall. Even though the city will argue they have zoned land in the area for the mall, no one will want to build an upscale mall next to 5 million square feet of warehouses and all the noise and air pollution that comes with thousands of trucks 24/7.

We also heard back on my question about whether the $10 million the city has earmarked for the bridge is included in the Mayor's $11 million reserves. We were told the reserves the Mayor talks about is the difference between the city's assets and liabilities and is not cash. We were told the bridge money is not included in the reserves.

This seems counter-intuitive. Wouldn't the bridge money need to be listed as an asset? Or, are there separate lists of assets and some are not used to calculate reserves? By the Mayor's definition of reserves the bridge money must be included. Right?