Modesto City Council Watch (1/23/13)

The Modesto City County on Tuesday night:

• Voted 4-1 to appoint Frank Ploof to the city's Citizens Housing & Community Development Committee, which advises the council regarding federal Department of Housing and Urban Development funding. The dissenting vote came from Councilman Dave Lopez, who raised questions earlier this month about Ploof's involvement with the Stanislaus Community Assistance Project. The housing nonprofit came under fire in mid-2011 for the more than $627,000 in compensation its development director earned in 2010 and for how it spent more than $8 million in federal funds it received from the city's Neighborhood Stabilization Program. Ploof said he was a SCAP board member for about three weeks in June 2011 and resigned once he realized the issues it faced. Councilman Joe Muratore, who has had business dealings with the NSP, abstained from the vote.

• Heard a presentation from the Information Technology Department regarding Modesto being named as one of the top-ranked local governments in the nation for its use of technology in the 10th annual Digital Cities Survey. Modesto was ranked eighth among cities with populations of 125,000 to 249,999.

• Took no action during a closed session on a federal lawsuit filed in May against the city and several Modesto police officers by a Modesto woman and her two daughters. The women claim that the police officers unlawfully intervened in a civil dispute between them and a repossession company representative who wanted to tow the mother's car in April 2011. The lawsuit claims that once the family disputed the repossession, the representative would have to seek court action to take the car. Instead, the lawsuit states, the representative called the police. Officers entered the family home without a warrant, would not leave when the family asked them and helped the representative take the car, the lawsuit says. Additionally, the lawsuit states that the officers manhandled the woman.