By Robert Haugh

As we predicted, the Council had a short meeting and started the summer break early.

We almost miss the days when the meetings were full of drama.

We remember when Mayor Jamie Matthews had a loud critic escorted out of the Chambers by Police Chief Mike Sellers. We remember when disgraced former Councilman Dominic Caserta used to predict his own tantrums then throw them.

Those were the good old days.

Last night,  there was no drama. The sun was still out when the meeting ended.  Wow.

Here are the major highlights:

• Mayor Eom Tai-Joon of Icheon, Republic of Korea, made a presentation and proposal about a Friendship City relationship with Santa Clara.  The Council seemed impressed. Stay tuned for future news about a new friendship city.

• The Council made an agreement with Ovations Food Services dba Spectra Food Services & Hospitality for “Interim Food & Beverage Operations at the Santa Clara Convention Center.”  It’ll be short term The City staff is doing an RFP to get the best possible provider by January 1, 2020. It sounds like the existing provider Aramark wasn’t cutting it.

It’s another step in the management changes at the Convention Center. But the workers will be protected because of Santa Clara’s Worker Retention Ordinance.

• The Council Adopted Phase I of the Fiscal Year 2019/20 Municipal Fee Schedule.  Here are the key changes from the staff report:

• A phased approach to increasing the Citywide fee(s). (Phase II will be in August).

• An increase in Technology Fee from 2.0% to 3.37%.

• Converting the current flat fee for Multi-Family (MF) Loan Subordination Request Review to a time and materials (Deposit) service in the Housing & Community Services Division.

• 56 fees were deleted. They’re either obsolete, redundant in nature and/or captured through internal City procedures.

• 28 new fees have been added. The proposed new fees are to recover the cost of city services.