Minutes after the Piedmont City Council selected John Chiang as the city's new mayor Tuesday night, Chiang outlined his priorities – with an emphasis on managing the city's finances in order to maintain current levels of of municipal services.
Chiang said he supports the Municipal Tax Review Committee's recommendation to include a five-year financial projection in the city's budgeting process.
In line with that, he hopes to form a new citizens' advisory committee within 45 days to focus on financial planning.
Chiang also emphasized the need to "live within our means" as a city. A large part of that, he said, is controlling the rising costs of city employee benefits. That should include employee contributions to cover increases in pension plan costs, he said.
Among Chiang's other major points:
- The need to renew the municipal services tax.
- Meeting EPA mandates for sanitary sewer repair and replacement.
- Support for public/private partnerships. He cited the Japanese Tea Garden and the Piedmont Center for the Arts as examples.
- Ensuring sufficient reserves for capital improvement projects.
Chiang also praised the work of groups that support a vibrant, diverse Piedmont community, citing the Appreciating Diversity Committee and PAAC (the Piedmont Asian American Club).
More Voices
Other city council members also spoke at Tuesday's combined council meeting and swearing-in ceremony at Piedmont Community Hall.
Margaret Fujioka, re-elected to the council and chosen as the city's new vice mayor, said the city "must bring expenditures in line with revenue" and also emphasized the need to renovate Piedmont's sanitary sewer system.
Other priorities, she said, include"being smarter and tougher on crime" and "encouraging greater civility in public discourse."
Bob McBain, newly elected to the council, thanked his supporters and praised a Piedmont Post series of articles on community cohesiveness.
In a letter read aloud at the meeting, council member Garrett Keating, on vacation this week, congratulated the winners of the Feb. 7 municipal election. He also praised Tim Rood, who lost a council seat to McBain by 26 votes, for his civic participation and said running for office should be recognized as a form of volunteerism.
The Post reporter does not understand the primary use of a vactor truck, which is to control sewer system overflows, not "for capturing video footage of underground pipes" as stated in the Post. Camera equipment can be added to a vactor, but this is not the desirable solution and Piedmont is already in the process of purchasing a separate camera equipped vehicle. The Post could have chosen to provide useful comparison information before the $400k vactor is purchased. For example, Oakland has five vactors which equates to 1 for each 78,000 population. Piedmont will have one vactor for our 10,667 population. We had three sewer system overflows in 2010, down from 13 in 2005 (source: Chester Nakahara “Counterpoints”).
I have not subscribed to the POST for years. I read it because I want to be media savy and know what is being said. Some people, like yourself, love the POST and think it is a quaint little town paper, but as a former mayor's wife, you know it is actually a manipulative force.
Don't hold your breath Mr Vinton/Meyers!! The fact that the POST printed this letter is Mr Cathrall's little mea culpa after the damage was done. It's his trade mark trick. We can only expect more unless we speak up.
Regardless, let's all step back, welcome John Chiang as Mayor whom I believe to be decent and honorable.
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I won't bother to describe the Jeff Wieler "Taliban" column from last year. Wieler's and Cathrall's apologies simply...WEREN'T. Disgusting. Karen: the foregoing is "an interesting commentary about YOUR (sic) understanding of the media in general."
I understand that you are making a distinction between opinion/letters and news reporting, but I was responding to an accusation that the Post was engaged in a "smear" campaign. That is a different matter and I don't think the accusation is true. But since you asked for an example, how's this: The Piedmonter and blogs, as you have indicated, carried lots of information about Measure A. Much of this information came from two individuals who publicly accused the entire city council, which included you, the staff and city attorney of lying and of violating the law. I believe that was misinformation. Finally, I do have a problem with people who think newspapers shouldn't exist if they don't agree with the news or views they see in that paper. If you don't like the paper, start your own, that's what Gray did.
Re "I do have a problem with people who think newspapers shouldn't exist if they don't agree with the news or views they see in that paper," and "The fact that you think a publication that disagrees with your views should not be a part of the community, as you said in your first post...," - Lynn never said either of those; YOU are smearing HER by twisting the facts and putting words in her mouth. She said that Mr. Cathrall should no longer be a part of dividing the town and fueling the fires (of divisiveness) week after week (with his editorial bias in his paper). I can't gauge whether or not you can tell the difference between how you perceive these things and what others have actually said, written, or done.