Cole Off General Plan Panel
City Councilman Rick Cole, charging Tuesday that his colleagues were “nickel-and-diming” a plan to get the community involved in revising the city’s General Plan, resigned as co-chairman of the General Plan Coordinating Committee.
The 11-member coordinating committee had proposed to hire the Berkeley-based firm of Moore, Incafano, Goltsman Inc. for $190,000 to generate interest in the General Plan, a formal statement of the city’s long-range planning goals and land use aims, by next August.
But other council members, expressing displeasure at the number of outside consultants hired by the city, proposed that local experts and community groups instead be given funds to participate in the process.
A majority ultimately agreed, with Cole abstaining, to hire the firm with a smaller contract of $175,000 with at least $15,000 of that designated for community groups.
Under terms of an out-of-court-agreement with a group of litigants, the city must complete its work on the General Plan by next August.
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