As expected, Anaheim City Council members Kris Murray, Gail Eastman and Harry Sidhu failed to show up to last night's special meeting regarding their votes last week approving nearly $160 million in bed-tax subsidies to the developer of two Disney Resort-area hotels.
About 75 residents and community activists showed up, but with no quorum to reverse, postpone or at least discuss the sweetheart deal for the GardenWalk hotel partnership, it is scheduled to go into effect today.
]
Mayor Tom Tait, who called the special meeting a week after joining Councilwoman Lorri Galloway in opposing the tax giveaway, cautioned the audience not to read too much into the absence of their three council colleagues.
In fact, he noted that Sidhu was said to have undergone back surgery that day.
It's unclear whether Sidhu injured his back lugging the $6,800 in campaign cash GardenWalk hotel developers William O'Connell and Ajesh Patel arranged to have businesses give the councilman before the tax subsidy vote.
More on the deal and the events that led to last night's protest here:
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.