Seward City Council Member Gets Paid $50K to Fix Damage He Caused

Someone from Seward passed this newsbit along the other day. Not completely sure about all the details here, but this seems to be the general story.

At Monday's City Council meeting in Seward, Councilman Steve Schafer was asked to recuse himself because he had a conflict of interest in the next item. He then went to sit in the audience. The Council then discussed how Shafer's illegally built road over Japanese Creek had dammed up the creek during last October's flood. When the road eventually washed away, the built up debris and surge damaged the city's levee further down the creek.

The resolution before the Council was to require the bridge builder (Shafer) to pay the $100,000 damage to the levee. Normally, members of the audience can speak to an item at the beginning of the meeting for two minutes or at the end for five minutes. Shafer got his two minutes during the public comment period.

However, another council member proposed the rules be suspended so that Shafer could talk to the Council. Shafer then spoke for nearly an hour during which he argued that the engineering of the levee itself was the problem, not his illegally built road. When the rule suspension was over, the Council voted to split the cost of repairing the levee with Shafer. They then agreed that Shafer would do the repairs himself and the city would reimburse him for half the cost.


Now, there are a couple of issues here that seem strange.

• It would be interesting to know when anyone has been given an hour to address the Council. Did he get so much time because he is on the council?
  
• On the other hand, it would seem there should be some sort of due process that would allow Shafer, or any member of the public, a right to air his side of the case before being fined by the city
• And if I understood this right, after causing $100K damage, he's going to end up getting paid $50K to repair the damage. Why didn't the repair work go out to bid?
• If the problem was with the engineering of the levee, why did the City charge him at all?