Acquisition of GoMentum Station Operating Rights by AAA

Recommendations 1

• R2

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  a To control costs and foster more accurate expense forecasting, City of Concord PSAs for LRA consultants should have specified hourly rates by either position or by individual and the hourly rates should remain fixed across the one-year PSA. Transparency The grand jury discovered that the LRA staff and their outside consultants were not allowed to offer recommendations on the selection of CNWS master developer applicants during the SOQ. This situation was present during the selection between Lennar and Catellus in September 2015. According to data officially released in the 2016 Jenkins Report, on September 1, 2015, there was discussion about whether the city council wanted staff to make a recommendation in the report presented at the meeting at which the city council would select the master developer. The initial decision by the city council was that “…consistent with general city policy, staff should make a recommendation.”33 This decision was made in response to questions posed in a report on Master Developer Term Sheets and Selection Process by LRA staff.34 Additionally, both companies vying for the master developer selection were advised there would be a staff recommendation at the end of negotiation process. On September 16, in a closed city council session, a near final staff report was presented, which included staff’s recommendation of Catellus as Master Developer.35 In late September 2015, the City Manager instructed the LRA staff to remove the staff recommendation from the staff report, after meeting separately with three members of the city council. In the days following the closed session, several council members changed their positions regarding inclusion of a recommendation in the staff report. The impetus for this change was a series of questionable allegations against Catellus and concerns by council that there would be a perception of favortism in the staff report. In late September, the city manager instructed LRA Manager Michael Wright, to remove the staff recommendation from the final staff report.36 Catellus then withdrew from the master developer selection process, and Lennar was awarded the CNWS master developer contract in May 2016. As stated in the Implementation of the Selection Process section earlier in this report, the Master Developer Selection ad hoc committee did not follow the LRA manager’s December 2020 recommendations on RFQ content. The RFQ limited the LRA team’s role to reviewing and vetting materials submitted for each applicant’s SOQ and then compiling these materials. There was no written report from the LRA team, just a spreadsheet showing the responses of the three applicants.