At the last City Council meeting, a motion was passed for City Council to review the City’s current relationship and contract terms with Urban Logic. Yet reaching this decision was not without its hurdles. Case in point, was Councilman Lloyd White’s request: “The current financial status of the city and the recent actions by the district attorney targeting Urban Logic Consultants requires a re-evaluation of our financial strategies and relationships with our contractors.”  Beyond Lloyd’s motion not getting initial support, Councilman Mark Orozco counter-proposed for these discussions to be “informational discussions only,” meaning for these to require no action by the City, and for these to take place behind closed doors.  Fortunately, Orozco’s amendment did not pass and Lloyd prevailed.

Read about this topic at the Press Enterprise article:  City Council to review consultant’s contract.  On this topic, you can also listen to the audio clip by Matt Guilhem from KVCR News: Beaumont Officials Will Go Public With Issues Related To FBI Raid.

So, why is having public discussions on the Urban Logic relationship with the City so important?

For over 20 years, Urban Logic’s relationship with the City resulted in the awarding multiple contracts, projects and financial services. Furthermore, the City’s actions have resulted in the awarding of contracts without conventional bidding procedures, and a lack of transparency in actual bidding. Regardless of countless calls for transparency by Beaumont residents over the years, these Urban Logic contracts have grown to multi-million amounts without credible external scrutiny or public accountability.

The lack of response by the City to several citizen’s requests eventually resulted on a raid by the FBI and the District Attorney’s Office on April 22, 2015 at Beaumont City Hall, at Alan Kapanicas, City Manager’s home and the offices of Urban Logic. These raids also have resulted in calls by City council members Lloyd White and Mike Lara for more transparency.

For this reason, we ask you to contact Councilman Mark Orozco at ma**@ma********.com, and demand for him to support a motion for the current contract with Urban Logic and the City Manager, Alan Kapanicas, to be fully investigated. Make sure to ask neighbors to do the same.

Last year, the residents of the Stetson community on Brookisde, presented over 100 signed Petitions requesting that their Mello Roos Bonds are not to be extended or refinanced. Their Petitions were ignored by Beaumont Staff and Council.On May 5, 2015 the Stetson Area 5 Bond was put on the Agenda for Refinancing. Council passed a Motion that read:

202:30 Pinkney: The Motion is to approve the Bond Issuance and you had two items; one was to have Rod Gunn and ass to provide a breakdown of the Cost of Issuance BEFORE issuance of the Bonds.

Mark Orozco: Yes.

Pinkney: And once the Bonds have been issued to direct Staff to come back with proposed uses for the Bond Proceeds for the facilities.

Mark Orozco: Once they’ve been issued, yes.

However; the May 5, 2015 Minutes Read:

Rod Gunn and Associates will bring a full disclosure report to Council AFTER the issuance of bonds.

The Stetson Area 18 Bonds started trading on May 15th.

The refinancing of Stetson’s Bond issuance effectively overrides the original motion by the City Council, and the will of the community residents. Therefore, the City Staff has engaged in a blatant act of insubordination. More details are available here: Stetson Area 18 – Bond Is Refinanced Regardless of What Citizens and Council Say.

Also, watch John Dyson’s video cast about Stetson’s bond here

In these TWO counts against the City of Beaumont, It is clear that the City manager and City staff will continue to move against the will of Beaumont residents despite all the information about wrongdoing that has been revealed recently.Therefore you are urged to:

Thank you all for your support,

BCRG
Beaumont Citizens for Responsible Growth