Monika Wilson ended the public comments with a gentle lecture. “Everyone needs to show everyone respect. We on the dais need to take the high road to set a good example. Yes, Mr. Duran, you’re looking at me, that’s good, you need to look at them too even if you don’t like what they say.”

City Manager Steve Duran was too obvious. He made a point of ignoring the speakers, typing on his phone, making faces; leaning back in his chair draining his can of soda, his back to the public.

Did you go to the September 22nd meeting to speak your mind, only to find you were talking to a row of bobbleheads? Or maybe you were one of the hundred or so interested citizens, waiting for answers that never came. Did you feel confused, conned, bamboozled?

Steve Duran blindsided the public in Closed Session on August 25. With approval from Mayor Wade Harper and council members Rocha, Wilson and Tiscareno, he gave first dibs on our waterfront to City Ventures, Inc. Antioch had never heard of them, being unaware of Duran’s dealings in Hercules. Appearing for the first time on a list in the Closed Session Agenda, City Ventures has yet to make a public presentation of their vision. They have yet to show their corporate face in public. More than a month later, we have yet to learn the details.

Duran keeps telling us that his secret meeting with the developers was perfectly legal. It wasn’t. He said it in Hercules about a similar situation when he was their city manager and now he’s saying it to us. But in their open letter of 2012 Hercules residents showed how Duran and the Hercules City Council were violating the Brown Act and the Surplus Land Act, as he and the Antioch City Council are doing here.

No proper notice was given to the “priority entities” that had a right to bid on the properties, nor to the public. Ask the neighbors: Even down to the signs that were never posted, but should have been, there was no proper notice of the potential sale of the properties. On the “8/25/15 Antioch City Council Closed Session Announcement”, Duran says: “Under negotiation: price and terms of payment.” That wasn’t all that was under negotiation, but he had to pretend it was, didn’t he? Because under the “Real Property Exception” in the Bagley-Keene Open Meeting Act, only price and terms may be discussed, not land-use policy. He and the city council were inside making land-use policy with an outside corporation while the people of Antioch were kept in the dark.

So what was City Ventures, the supposed adverse party, doing in the same room where Duran was being “directed” in negotiations by the Council? “This provision has been the subject of considerable abuse. For example, government agencies involved in enormous, multi-faceted transactions have used a real property portion of the potential transaction to discuss the entire matter in secret. It has also been invoked to cover meetings attended by representatives of the adverse party in the negotiation.”

As the Council clucked their approval of the Constitution and proclaimed “Constitution Day,” it started to look like the City might show some respect for the will of the people. But they didn’t. The elephant in the room was their silence. Ambitious Wade Harper, his behind-the-scenes campaign to be the next well-paid County Superintendent underway, was prudently absent. The council members who showed up, kept their mouths shut. Thirty people spoke out against the waterfront giveaway; they were answered with wooden smiles.

Finishing up on the high road, Monika Wilson continued to ignore the inconvenient public. Not even Lori Ogorchok gave them the courtesy of a response, although she did give three minutes to speak and read the emails – which the council doesn’t publish – out loud. Wade Harper would have cut their time to two minutes and gavelled them down if they went over, if he had been there. Did they make a unanimous decision in secret to stonewall us? That would be a violation of the serial meetings prohibition of the Brown Act if they did. Who would have advised them to do that?

The Brown Act can be a problem for councils who want to hold illegal secret meetings, yet still give the appearance of following the law.

It was a problem for Mary Rocha the night she bustled up to Celebrate Antioch Foundation members and commiserated in a low confidential voice, “They voted against us!” It was a four to one vote, against CAF’s park and recreation plan. Ah, so was Mary Rocha that one brave lonely voice, speaking out for the little people? Later in the meeting some citizen mentioned the Brown Act to the council, like waving a cross at a vampire. Rocha was shocked when for the first time the council revealed how the votes went – and threw her under the bus. Turns out, Lori Ogorchok was the dissenting vote, not Rocha.

Antioch bureaucrats hate the light of day. That’s why Duran, wary from his run-in with the Brown Act in Hercules, was lucky to hire a like-minded city attorney. In his blog, Derek Cole harks back wistfully to the days before the serial meetings prohibition was enacted.* Mr. Cole believes the sunshine laws are OK within limits, but cities can’t do business efficiently when they have to answer to a prying public. He should give the council – and Duran – advice on how to put up at least a pretense of open government.

“You sold us out, why can’t you even give us a reason for your decision?” someone asked. “Is there some kind of Robert’s Rules of Order saying you can’t answer us?” An exasperated woman blurted, “Why don’t you say something? You’re like puppets!”

“The people of this state do not yield their sovereignty to the agencies which serve them. The people, in delegating authority, do not give their public servants the right to decide what is good for the people to know and what is not good for them to know. The people insist on remaining informed so that they may retain control over the instruments they have created." -GOVERNMENT CODE SECTION 11120-11132

* [www.calimunilaw.com/2015/07/state-commission-finds-that-brown-acts-serial-meeting-prohibition-may-impede-good-government/]

