City Council Meeting: April 13

The April 13 Santee involved a lot of proclamations, awards, the passing of some interesting resolutions, and some interesting debate, but nothing unexpected.

The week of April 10-16 has been designated and National Week in Santee.

"We are working very hard to make you proud of your library," said Penny Taylor, Manager, who received the proclamation on behalf of the library.

The library is open seven days a week, serves an average of 17,000 people a month and check out over 39,000 items a month.

won two awards from the California Parks and Recreation Society for "facility based design based achievement in the development and implementation of the project that exhibited innovative, creative design, providing good utilization of the site for safety and operations, involving community groups, demonstrating creative use of materials, equipment, plants..."

The City Attorney was previously asked to issue a report about the legality of Santee's local campaign financing law which limits individual contributions and bans contributions from "corporations, associations and other entities," based on the recent "Citizens United" Supreme Court case which shot down a ban on corporate campaign financing. The City Attorney stood by the Santee law, saying that "a local ban on campaign contributions from corporations and other organizations should be upheld as long as it is closely drawn to match anticorruption interests."

This prompted Councilmember to bring up the subject of possibly changing the local campaign finance laws to allow organizations, PACs and corporations to give to political campaigns.

"There's a catch-22 when it comes to who can donate," Minto said. "An incumbent has a huge advantage in my opinion, with the network of contacts we've made it's easier to raise funds, and harder for new challengers to get a foothold."

He said it comes down to two issues: freedom of speech and protection against corruption. Minto said he wanted the council to consider opening campaign contributions up to PACs and corporations and associations.

"I'm all for changing this, after 2012, you guys can change it on your election cycle, I like mine the way it is," said .

Councilmember said he would like to see PACs able to contribute.

The council was deadlocked 2-2 with missing, so it was decided that it would brought back up after the 2012 elections.

The following resolutions of note were approved:

• Adoption of resolution accepting the as complete.
• Adoption of resolution awarding the Fencing at contract to the Atlas Fence Company for $16,829.50.
• Adoption of resolution for the approval of grant funds from the State Coastal Conservancy for the Hanlon-Walker property acquisition. The City of Santee is given the chance to purchase 125 acres of riverfront land and ponds along the San Diego River east of Town Center to the City's boundary. The property would be sold for $2,200,000. The San Diego River Conservancy has secured a $1 million grant, and is helping the City get the remaining funding through Coastal Conservancy grants. In the end, acquiring this piece of land would cost the City nothing, with costs of about $18,750 annually for upkeep.