How Much Damage Can Five City Council Members Do In Five Hours? Plenty!

A Meeting From Hell

The December 19, 2023, Saratoga Springs City Council meeting was another five-hour meeting where the requirements for legislation were ignored and where misinformation was shamelessly spread.

Here is an account of some of the actions, or inactions, that evening.

Promises, What Promises?

At the previous Council meeting, Accounts Commissioner Dillon Moran tried to pass a resolution placing himself in charge of overseeing a contract to audit the the city’s 50 point plan put together by the Saratoga Springs Police Reform Task Force. It was an obvious stretch to have him, rather than the Public Safety Commissioner, supervise the audit. Moran withdrew the resolution, telling his colleagues it would be more appropriate to have incoming Public Safety Commissioner Tim Coll and Public Works Commissioner Jason Golub, who had co-chaired the Task Force, in charge.

Apparently, he either changed his mind or forgot about his promise. The resolution that was actually adopted by the Council on December 19th was the same one Moran had withdrawn at the previous meeting. None of his colleagues on the Council acknowledged his decision to renege, let alone offered any challenge, including Commissioner Golub, who was present at the Council table. Did no one else on the Council bother to read the resolution, or did no one on the Council care? Who knows?

Making A Mockery Of Transparency

Mayor Ron Kim issued a memo at the meeting on the pending release of the New York State Attorney General’s investigation into allegations against the city for its treatment of Black Lives Matter activists. Kim had already taken his memo to every media outlet in the capital district and gotten plenty of coverage.

Congratulating himself on his alleged transparency, he claimed he was issuing his statement out of a commitment to transparency even though he admitted he had not actually seen the Attorney General’s report which has not yet been released. His document was full of hearsay conjectures based on discussions he had had with the AG office during the investigation.

Apparently, the Attorney General was not pleased that Kim did this. In a tersely worded release, the Attorney General’s office wrote:

 “We are disappointed that details from private and preliminary settlement conversations were shared without our knowledge or approval.”

Office of the New York State Attorney General

Kim’s $13,250.00 Error

Every opportunity Mayor Kim finds to remind Saratoga Springs citizens of the cost of providing legal assistance for officials and employees swept up in the Attorney General’s investigation, he recites the names and amounts.

In the same release that speculated on the Attorney General’s impending report, he again listed the officials and their bills.

In the case of former Public Safety Commissioner Robin Dalton, he stated that the city had paid $29,000.00.

How Kim arrived at that figure is unknown. The actual bill was for $15, 775.00.

At the meeting, Robin Dalton advised the Mayor of his error during the public comment period. Did he apologize? No. He sat grim-faced.

The following is an email from Ms. Dalton’s attorney that indicates he has never spoken to Mayor Kim and had only one brief contact with City Attorney Tony Izzo, during which he indicated the initial estimated cost, which was not $29,000.00. The following is an email documenting this.

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From: Michael P. McDermott, Esq.
Date: Thu, Dec 21, 2023 at 1:17?PM
Subject: Dalton legal expenses
To: jcatkids@gmail.com
CC: Meghan E. Hebert

Dear Ms. Dalton,

I am writing in response to your request for a breakdown of the legal fees paid to date on your behalf by the City of Saratoga Springs.

Initially, I note that the only person I discussed potential fees with was Mr. Tony Izzo. I enclose our letter to Mr. Izzo dated February 1, 2023 wherein I gave an initial estimate of $10,000.00 as the cost to respond to the Attorney General’s subpoena. I have never discussed your case, nor offered an estimate
of future legal expenses, with Mayor Kim.

To date, the city has been billed, and paid our firm, the sum of $15,755.00 for your defense. That sum represents $6,990.00 in attorney time and $8,765.00 in disbursements associated with the data harvesting of your phone, which we paid on your behalf to Capital Investigations Group. Copies of the relevant documents are attached for your reference.

If you have any other questions regarding this matter, please feel free to contact me.

Best regards,
Mike

Michael P. McDermott, Esq.
President and Shareholder

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Dillon Moran and His Colleagues on the Council: City Procedures and Policies? Who Cares?

The city has a rigorous set of procedures that were established by Marilyn Rivers during her tenure as the Director of Risk and Safety to ensure that in awarding contracts, the city is protected from any mishandling that might create problems in the future. They can be cumbersome, but their rigorous enforcement is part of the reason the city has enjoyed one of the highest bond ratings in New York State.

At the pre-agenda meeting on Friday, December 15,2023, Dillon Moran offered the following:

“We are transitioning the Risk and Safety approvals. We uncovered a spot where I wasn’t seeing certain documents [JK: What ever that means.] I’m working through all those approvals today for the outstanding contracts. What we had is them essentially move forward contingent on my approval. Those will all be resolved before the end of the day [JK: That day being Friday, December 15. Even if he did not meet his goal of properly updating the information that day, he still had four days to complete his work.]  

Dillon Moran December 15, 2023

On Moran’s agenda for the December 19th Council meeting was an item to approve a contract with Beacon Risk Group to audit the city’s progress in implementing the Police Reform Task Force’s fifty-point “Reinvention Plan” that had been adopted by the previous Council in 2021.

Beacon Risk had been selected last June to do the audit. The problem was that as of the Tuesday evening Council meeting, the insurance certification document posted with the Beacon Risk Group (BRG) resolution still did not include all the coverage required by the city, including the mandated umbrella policy, the auto insurance policy, and workman’s comp insurance or a state waiver that would relieve BRG of this requirement.

I attended the Council meeting to point out that the insurance document on the city’s agenda for BRG, which Moran was asking the Council to adopt, did not meet the city’s requirements.

There was no reason why Moran could not wait to ask for Council approval until he could present to them and to the public a properly documented award. After all, BRG had been selected some six months earlier, so no one seemed in a hurry to get this done. 

Why Moran was suddenly in a feverish rush to get this contract approved when the Council had a special meeting scheduled for December 28, 2023, is anyone’s guess. This was not the only resolution he was insisting be adopted in violation of the city’s purchasing policies. 

This is a video of your blogger making these points to an indifferent Council.

During his agenda, Moran assured his colleagues that he had in his possession a proper insurance certification form from BRG. Moran did not bother to disclose why he did not properly post this alleged correct document with the resolution. Nor did Moran explain why he could not wait until the proper documents could be posted to ask for a vote. It is, of course, possible that Moran does not have the actual proper insurance certification.

None of this seemed to bother a pliant Council, which unanimously approved the BRG resolution.

This is a clip from later on in the meeting on a different subject, but it really says it all. Moran publically proclaims that the Council routinely violates city policies and procedures. Be assured this is not taken out of context. 

Duplicative Contracts, Who Cares

Last May, the Council approved a resolution to establish a Restorative Justice Panel. Their mission was to “seek to define via community input and dialogue a ‘Saratoga Springs’ Restorative Justice Program.” While I appreciate the dedication of the members of the Restorative Justice Panel, their meetings have been unfocused and marked by confusion. 

I will leave it to the readers to decide whether my characterization of them is ungenerous. Here is a link to one of their meetings: https://saratogaspringsny.new.swagit.com/videos/274333

Due to their inability to come up with a concrete strategy, they resorted to recommending two actions. Hire a consultant and do a survey. This is the common outcome committees resort to when they are lost.

The process, engineered by Deputy Mayor Angella Rella, was to exploit the poorly worded city policy regarding the purchasing of professional services in order to rush funding through to hire a consultant using a Request for Quotes (RFQ) instead of the more appropriate Request for Proposal (RFP) procedure.

There are two vehicles for contracting professional and other services and goods.

1. Request For Quotes (RFQ)
2. Request For Proposals (RFP)

Request for quotes are supposed to be used when the item(s) being sought are defined clearly enough that all the bidders have to do, as the word “quote” signifies, is to submit an amount. RFQs are most often used by the Department of Public Works. So DPW might put out an RFQ for one hundred shovels or for a Ford 150 two-door pickup truck.

An RFP is used when the city has a problem they want solved. They might put out an RFP for a homeless shelter. Here, the competitors would have to come up with proposed designs and their costs. 

The award process for RFPs is highly structured. The city must establish a set of criteria by which to compare the proposals. Contacts between the bidders and the city are supposed to be rigorously enforced. The answer to any question asked by a bidder must be shared with all the other competitors.

In the case of this RFQ put together by Rella, the words informal and unstructured come to mind. There is a catch in the purchasing procedures. RFQs are allowed for any purchase under $30,000.00. So this group, supported by the City Attorney, claims that even though the Restorative Justice Committee was soliciting proposals rather than just quotes, they could do so. In so doing, they were able to ignore all the requirements for establishing a transparent and structured process by which to compare the proposals.

If this all seems confusing, it is, but it reflects an indifference to the need to use a professional method to compare the proposals in a manner that is fair to the bidders and that will result in an effective use of city money.

The winning “quote” included the following statement:

“In light of the questions and concerns regarding the fidelity of the implementation plan to-date, we will work collaboratively with the Reinvention Plan Implementation Team to design and publish a public and frequently updated ‘Report Card’ detailing actual numerical and qualitative progress in implementing with fidelity, each of the fifty points”

Fenton-Ives successful proposal for restorative justice

As Jane Weihe pointed out to the Council, this is a clear duplication of the audit that Beacon Risk Group is being contracted to do.

Again, there was no need to rush through the approval of the resolution to contract with this firm on Restorative Justice. Under Marilyn Rivers’s hawk eyes, she would have stopped this cold and insisted that the apparent conflict be resolved. Unfortunately, Dillon Moran, who now oversees Risk and Safety, in his usual rush, saw no need to correct this deliverable. Unfortunately, neither did any of his colleagues at the Council table. So, both Ives-Fenton (for around $30,000) and BRG(for somewhere between $75,000 and $100,000) will be paid by the city to duplicate some of each other’s work.

Minita Sanghvi : “You Can’t Do That”

Dillon Moran: “Oh, Yes I Can”

Before the city can authorize a contract, it must first authorize the money to be spent on it. This involves determining what pot of money the funding will come from.

Moran’s agenda included a resolution to transfer money to RISE for its homeless shelter as an extension of their contract. Finance Commissioner Sanghvi offered that she supported the idea and she was sure she could find the money to pay for it out of unexpended money in the Mayor’s department. She vigorously opposed adopting the resolution, though, until the money to pay for it could be identified and a transfer authorized.

In spite of the fact that there was still a December 28,2023, meeting scheduled at which time this could be done properly, Moran and Kim would have none of it.

Things got heated as Moran hectored Sanghvi as he pressed to override her opposition. Kim and Moran claimed that the executive director of RISE was “in a panic” over the idea of any delay. This proved to be false.

This is typical of Moran’s behavior. Kim tried to shut down Sanghvi earlier by shouting, “Call the question.” This is just another example of the Mayor’s routinely demonstrated ignorance of Roberts Rules Of Order. The question can only be called when the person calling for it has the floor. It is an abuse to interrupt a person who is speaking by invoking “call the question.”

In a further abuse of Robert’s Rules, the Mayor routinely incorrectly seeks seconds, discussions, and votes on “friendly amendments”. It is one of the reasons Council meetings run for hours. The proper use of a friendly amendment is to request the person who has a resolution before the body to allow for a “friendly amendment.” This is to say, can I amend your resolution to add this language. If the person accepts the language and there is no objection, the chair may simply declare that the amendment is adopted.

Moran attempts to bully Sanghvi into adopting his resolution in spite of the fact it is in violation of the city’s policies and procedures.

Here, Kim characterized the rules and procedures for properly adhering to the city’s purchasing policies as “obstacles that aren’t real.”

Scary!

Is it any wonder that the city has a problem securing liability insurance? Given the flagrant disregard for scrupulously adhering to the city’s purchasing practices, it is surprising we have a carrier at all. The next shoe to drop will be the city’s bond rating.