Dan Doyle is not happy Lathrop is discussing flood issues behind closed doors.

The Lathrop landowner– a regular fixture at Lathrop city council meetings anytime something on the agenda comes within a stone’s throw of his Dos Reis Road parcel – went to one of the meetings to see exactly what the city’s plan was moving forward, he was met with not just a cold shoulder, but the cold vinyl paint as the door was squarely shut in his face. 

Doyle wasn’t a happy camper.

But according to Lathrop City Attorney Salvador Navarrete, the city had no obligation to hold the door open for Doyle or anybody else in the public at this juncture – especially since there weren’t three members of the council present to discuss city business behind closed doors. Since no open meeting laws were violated, Navarrete said that it was well within the city’s right to continue its fact-finding mission with the developers that have and are expected to continue funding the city’s response to Senate Bill 5. It is a statewide venture that will force cities that have at least some portion of their sphere of influence fall within the 200-year flood plain to overhaul existing levees if they plan on continuing development. 

Lathrop has used a fund setup and paid for by developers to cover some of the early engineering work required to formulate an SB5 strategy. Doing the actual work to the levees — converting them into the “super levees” that first burst onto the scene when River Islands did the world voluntarily to ease fears of government regulators and prospective homeowners — will take an excessive amount of money and likely be a multi-city effort.