Butte County Grand Jury Report Biggs City Government*

Published: June 17, 2008 5 pages

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⚠️ Translation Notice: This content has been automatically translated. The original English text is the official version. Translation may contain errors.

⚠️ Este contenido ha sido traducido automáticamente. El texto original en inglés es la versión oficial. La traducción puede contener errores.

Findings and Recommendations 3 findings

The current Mayor and City Council have taken actions that have been perceived by many Biggs Citizens as contrary to the best interests of the City of Biggs.

Related Recommendations (1)

City Council members who vote on issues which might create a strong public concern that a conflict of interest exists, should consider recusing from that vote in order to maintain public confidence and trust in the City Council.

The Biggs City Council currently has a total of four members out of the authorized five members, due to a vacancy which occurred on July 7th of 2007. The Grand Jury finds the lack of action to fill the vacancy disturbing.

Related Recommendations (1)

The City Council should act immediately to find a qualified individual to serve in the City Council position that has been vacant since July of 2007

Serious concerns regarding trust of the City Council decision-making process, transparency of government, and insufficient consideration of the public good in City Council decisions exist among many Biggs citizens.

No recommendations for this finding

Agency Responses 1

Government agencies' official responses to this report's findings and recommendations. Click on a response to see the structured breakdown.

City of Biggs

August 18, 2008 • 6 pages • 4 responses • Score: -3 (+0, 1, -3) View Details ▾

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4 responses to findings and recommendations

The current Mayor and City Council have taken actions that have been perceived by many Biggs Citizens as contrary to the best interests of the City of Biggs.

Response: Disagree Score: -1

Respondent disagrees wholly with the finding. Council questions how many citizens of Biggs were actually surveyed to arrive at this claim of "many citizens," and how many of those interviewed actually reside within the city limits.

Response: Implemented

Score: 0

This recommendation is State law, was implemented years ago and continues to be the normal practice in Biggs. Biggs City Council members have always and always will consider self-disqualifying and abstaining from any vote that presents a conflict of interest.

The City Council should act immediately to find a qualified individual to serve in the City Council position that has been vacant since July of 2007

Response: Will Not Implement

Score: -1

This recommendation cannot legally be implemented. The Grand Jury should have known that, having not made an appointment within 30 days following the declaration of a vacancy, the earliest that this vacant position can legally be filled is in an election (and the next election is the November general election), pursuant to State election code for general law cities.

Response: Disagree Score: -1

Respondent disagrees wholly with the finding. It is difficult to respond to such a statement. As is no doubt typical in any local jurisdiction, there are some Biggs citizens who may have an undisclosed reason (e.g., personal grudge) that would serve as motivation for making this kind of a complaint without just cause.

* This report's PDF did not contain easily extractable text and required Optical Character Recognition (OCR) for analysis. There may be minor errors in the extracted findings and recommendations due to OCR limitations with scanned documents.