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It would be useful to see a full accounting of what the Cities spent for this failure.

First, they hired a very expensive consultant to help design the flawed Fire Benefit Charge mechanism.

Then, they devoted a lot of staff and City Council time to meetings. As Councilmember Huynh said, "we had a lot of meetings and worked really hard on this." Except at all of those meetings, they only listed to the City Staff and the consultant. They never invited the public to sit at the table and ask hard questions. Lots of money spent.

They devoted a lot of staff time to answering questions, including dozens of public records requests that were needed for the public to actually learn what they were proposing. That's where we found their proposed salary schedules, the actual fact that they planned zero new firefighters, and other things. More money spent.

After they voted to put it on the ballot, the City staff (and perhaps yet another consultant) spent time drafting a blatantly promotional mailer, to convince voters to approve the RFA. More money spent.

City council members and firefighters, including the Fire Chief, attended a lot of public forums to discuss the proposal. More time spent, and time is money.

Then, of course, they had to pay the County Auditor to run a special single-issue election. They could have waited until August, when an election was being held anyway, but they were in a hurry-up before the public finds out how bad this is frame of mind. More money spent.

There are now several complaints filed with the Public Disclosure Commission against the individuals at the Cities who put together and authorize the spending on the promotional fliers. I'll bet the Cities are spending more money on attorneys to "defend" these people for having (allegedly) broken the law. More money spent.

I hope there is a comprehensive tabulation of the time and money spent for staff, consultants, printing, mailing, meetings, meeting spaces, attorneys and more for this mistake. We should hold the elected officials accountable for this waste.