Friday, August 29, 2008 | On Tuesday, the mayor will ask the City Council to confirm his reappointments of three CCDC Board members, Fred Maas, Kim Kilkenny and Robert McNeely whose terms have expired even as several investigations of CCDC are underway and it is important to know whether any of these board members are implicated in the growing scandal at CCDC. With the collusion of Council President Scott Peters, these reappointments have been placed on the consent calendar.
Specific arguments against appointing any of these CCDC board members are as follows:
Maas and Kilkenny do not reside in the city of San Diego. City policy is to appoint city residents to commissions and boards. Maas is a Republican political operative turned developer and a confidante of Nancy Graham — meeting with her according to her calendar for the whole of Wednesday mornings for weeks.
As befits a political operative, he currently has the role of distancing the CCDC Board from Graham even though they appointed her, gave her a $65,000 bonus for unknown services, and allowed her to run CCDC as if it were a charitable organization for downtown developers.
Maas refuses to release documents detailing the goals set for Graham and how she achieved them to warrant the $65,000 bonus even though the board violated the Ralph M. Brown Act (Government Code Section 54957) in conducting and voting on her compensation in closed session. Kilkenny is an executive of a major developer of Otay Ranch who seems to have little concept that he is supposed to protect the public interest. McNeely was on the selection committee that chose Nancy Graham.
Mayor Sanders seems to think it is appropriate for him to treat CCDC directors differently to SEDC directors and the interesting question is why?