Another Illegal Meeting by City Council members against the public interest!

On Thursday Feb.12th the City Council members went on a tour of the Evanston Water Plant the notice was posted on the City web site,
On Wednesday Feb 11th I called the water plant and asked where I could park when I would come on the tour, given this was a meeting all council members were attending I viewed it open to the public under the open meetings act.
I was told to go to the east gate and inform them I was there for the tour.  About two hours later they called me and told me I could not attend the tour since it was not a meeting of the city council but a tour, and the public was not allowed to attend due to national security issues. ( there are no federal homeland security rules about water plants )
Also I found out about the time I was called, a email was sent out advising staff not to attend the meeting since it was a tour of the council members and not "public" meeting.
Why should the public be concerned?
The water department has recently hired a consultant to justify  very large increases in our water and sewer bills.
A 10% increase was proposed this year, along with multi- year increases going over 40% over the next few years!
Why?
The Citizens have been conserving water, thus demand is way down and operating revenues are dropping.  Also they are proposing upgrades to the water plant and want more funds to replace the 100 year old water lines under the streets.
Lets take a look at some of the nonsense and other issues which appear to be going on here.
The city council with the budget they just passed, in this political year shut down the water department proposed 10% increase in fees.
Thus it appears to me, the Water department is worried they may not have the revenue to operate and they may have to downsize the operation.  ( a reduction in "pork"?)
Also it is clear to me, council members have no clue as to what is going on here, at a recent Administrative and Public Works meeting (AP&W) one council stated she did not understand the operation of the water department.
Beyond the council day to day lack of knowledge of operations, it is clear they have no clue as to the capital plan, that is future construction projects.
Recently Alderperson Tisdahl who is running for Mayor is trying to reinvent herself as the Mayor who can bring home the "Stimulus Package" funds to Evanston due to her connection to federal officials.
Back in December Alderperson Tisdahl sent letter to Congresswoman Schakowsky and Sentor Durbin asking for federal funds with a list of city projects attached. 
What was interesting about the letters, is it appears the attached list of projects was never discussed in a public meeting, and was some how created in  private meetings.  As recently been noted it include $90 million dollars in funds to replace the Civic Center with a new building. The council in public recently stated it was not going to do this, but renovate the existing building.
So here again it appears the city and council members are voilating the law and working behind the publics back in closed meetings.
If you review the so called proposed "stimulus Package list", interesting enough it calls for only 1.5 million dollars of funds asked for water main replacement, I recall the city's capital plan asks for millions of dollars - over years. Thus the letter is even more disjointed from our real needs.
Also the letter, did not ask for any funds to correct - the freezing problems with the intake lines which again occurred this year ( and has occurred in the past years )and other items to have back up systems in place that appear missing in the plant.
This whole process reflects quite poorly on the council and Alderperson Tisdahl for lack of leadership.
What is interesting our former Director of Public Works, told me several months ago that he had been talking to federal and State officials about shovel ready projects. My question rather than  an Alderperson such as Liz Tisdahl who is not a professional engineer and has no qualifications or experience in capital projects, why wasn't the city represented by someone who knows what they are doing?  By the way our Director of Public works Engineering recently resigned and took a new job, one has to wonder how much his decesion was based on the lack of leadership and direction he was getting out of the city manager's office and the city council. ( job satisfaction) 
 
The issue with the water mains is even more troubling - years back I asked the city, about would they have enough water in the event of large fire in the downtown. They claimed everything was OK. If you look at the capital plan - they are stating one of the main reason for water line replacement beyond their 100 year old age, is they need to have "minimum fire flow" - one has to wonder if they have approved all these large buildings in the downtown without adequate fire water supply and given the system is so old, when the increase the pressure on it in the event of a large fire, the pipes may start breaking anyway. Now we need to catch up for their possible cover up?
 
This current council and those on, do not like to give the public information, there is almost as many executive session for every public meeting- I understand this - since most of the current council members  lack the intelligence and skill level to hold reasonable discussions in public, without looking like fools.
We taxpayers are the vicitims for their breaking the law on the open meeting act, since money is just wasted and our taxes keep going up.