Lancaster Council Meeting Is a Little Far Out

Members of the Lancaster City Council will be holding an unusual two-day session this week to discuss redevelopment financing. And although the meeting will be open to the public as required by state law, city officials aren’t expecting much of a turnout.

The council will be meeting in New York.

Sitting as the city’s Redevelopment Agency, council members voted Monday night to authorize $6,200 in agency funds to pay for travel by four lawmakers--Mayor Lynn Harrison and council members Arnie Rodio, Els Groves and William Pursley--to hold meetings Thursday and Friday with bankers and financial agencies.

The delegation, which leaves Wednesday and will return Saturday, will also include the city attorney, a representative of the city’s bond underwriter and the city’s redevelopment consultant, who are expected to bill the city later for their travel expenses.

City officials said the meetings--with officials from Sumitomo Bank and the bond rating agency Standard & Poors--will focus on a proposed $8.25-million bond issue that the city is considering for streets and other public works in a 13,000-acre redevelopment area.

The only Lancaster lawmaker staying home will be Councilman George Theophanis, who said he thought that the trip was unnecessary. The other city officials disagreed.

A similar New York jaunt in 1983 led to allegations that council members violated conflict-of-interest regulations. Those complaints were reviewed by both the district attorney’s office and the state Fair Political Practices Commission, but no action was taken.

This time, to comply with the state’s open meeting law, the city is publicly posting the trip as a special council meeting, since a quorum of the council will be present.

But Deputy City Clerk Patty Gaylor said she was not sure how to list the various locations of the council’s meetings. “They’re going to be all over the place,” she said.