Councilwoman Did Not Report Meeting with Lobbyist Hired by Firm Seeking Future City Contracts Worth Millions

Curt Pringle. president of Curt Pringle & Associates, with Councilwoman Natalie Meeks at OCV!be Unveiled on September 25, 2024.

By DUANE J. ROBERTS
Editor & Publisher

The Anaheim Investigator has evidence which suggests that Councilwoman Natalie Meeks might have deliberately withheld information from her public calendar to conceal the fact she met with a registered lobbyist hired by a company that seeks future contracts with the city potentially worth millions of dollars.

The lobbyist in question, Curt Pringle, president of Curt Pringle & Associates, not only has known Meeks since 2007 when she served under him as director of public works while he was mayor, but campaign finance paperwork filed with the city clerk shows both he and his wife contributed several thousand dollars to her city council campaign in 2022.

The omission was discovered by a confidential source who tipped off The Investigator a few days after noticing glaring discrepancies between two December 2024 entries in public calendars posted online by Meeks and Deputy City Manager Ted White, who was also with the councilwoman when she met Pringle.

According to a December 3rd entry on her public calendar, Meeks disclosed she traveled to Concord to meet with representatives of Glydways, a company which makes “autonomous vehicle transportation systems.” But instead of identifying everybody in attendance–as city policy required–she only wrote that “city staff” and “Glydways staff” were there.

Meeks’ December 3rd entry about the Glydways meeting.

White’s entry, however, was more detailed. Not only did he state the topic of the meeting but recorded the names and titles of everybody present. According to him there were nine people, including himself, Meeks, and Rudy Emami, the current director of public works. And who was the lobbyist? “Curt Pringle, Curt Pringle & Associates,” he typed.

White’s December 3rd entry about the Glydways meeting.

This is not the first time Meeks has failed to disclose her interactions with Pringle. Several photographs The Investigator obtained of OCV!be Unveiled, a ceremony which took place on September 25, 2024, not only reveal the councilwoman was present, but she can be seen mingling with both Pringle and Matthew Hicks, another registered lobbyist.

One image shows Meeks standing next to Don Wagner, an Orange County supervisor who serves the third district. Pringle can be seen on her right, along with Hicks and Paul Simonds, who was then senior vice president of Curt Pringle & Associates. Directly behind them is a photo collage composed of Anaheim Ducks hockey players.

The Investigator has no evidence that city business was discussed during this encounter. And a thorough review of Meeks public calendar for the month of September shows that she didn’t even bother to report that she attended this ceremony. However, to be completely fair, neither did Mayor Ashleigh Aitken, who was there as well.

Simonds, Hicks, Pringle, Meeks, and Wagner.

Meeks close relationship with Pringle spans across two decades. During her tenure as public works director, which began in 2007, she championed many of the same projects he backed as mayor, including building ARTIC near the Angel Stadium. She, like him, also favored a streetcar system connecting the Anaheim Resort with the Platinum Triangle.

Her loyalty to Pringle was handsomely rewarded in 2022 when he not only endorsed her for city council but, along with his wife Alexis, pumped $4,400 into her campaign. About a month after Meeks emerged victorious in that race, photos The Investigator has in its possession show her hanging out at Curt Pringle & Associates annual holiday bash.

Meeks at Pringle’s holiday bash in December 2022.

For a couple of years, the idea of creating a multi-million-dollar streetcar system in Anaheim lied dormant because Tom Tait, who served as mayor from 2010 to 2018, opposed it. But interest in it rekindled when Mayor Harry Sidhu set up a task force to explore a number of different transit options to connect the Anaheim Resort to the Platinum Triangle.

However, the COVID-19 pandemic, plus revelations Sidhu was under investigation by the FBI for corruption, put discussions about these matters on hold. The ball was later picked up by the Anaheim Transportation Network, the quasi-public company that operates a fleet of electric buses which shuttle tourists and workers around the Anaheim Resort.

An email obtained by The Investigator in 2020.

Glydways, the firm that hired Pringle as a lobbyist, is a high-tech company headquartered in San Francisco. Though not a streetcar manufacturer, it is developing small driverless vehicles, one option city officials are now considering in preparation for the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, which is expected to draw millions of visitors.

On its website, Glydways claims cities will spend less on infrastructure if they adopt their system. Maybe so. However, it still might be a tough sell if it eventually comes before the city council. Such transit projects require millions of dollars in federal grants. And with Donald Trump in power, its not a sure thing Anaheim will get them.

From Glydways website.

For the record, The Investigator reached out to Meeks for comment. For example, we asked her everything from why she didn’t include Pringle’s name on her December 3rd entry to inquiring if her office initiated the Glydways meeting. We questioned her about what dealings she had with Pringle and Hicks at the OCV!be Unveiled ceremony.

The councilwoman issued the following statement:

The OCVibe event was a celebration for the initial phase of construction. No business was discussed and, under the guidelines in place at the time, it was not a meeting listed on my public calendar.

The December 3 meetings in Northern California were coordinated through city staff at the request of those transportation vendors.  They were both educational meetings to learn about the transportation technologies each company is pursuing.

Several questions were emailed to Mike Lyster, chief communications officer for the city, which were also copied to other city officials, including the city ethics officer. Because we were aware of Meeks close ties to Pringle, our primary concern was whether or not she, or her senior policy aide, set up the meeting on his behalf.

In response, Lyster wrote:

The meeting was not initiated by Mayor Pro Tem Meeks or her office. Meeks did not bring the company to our attention.

Anaheim Public Works had been talking with Glydways since early 2023. Extending out of that conversation was an invitation to visit the company’s test track.

Other Council members were also invited for the visit. As an engineer by training, Meeks opted to join the city delegation, which also included city staff.

Glydways is one of several types of transportation technology we look at on an ongoing basis. Others include Swyft Cities, Waymo and Tesla’s autonomous vehicles.

We look at transportation technologies, including Glydways, with an eye toward moving people between the Anaheim Resort and the Platinum Triangle, not necessarily for the 2028 Olympics but with potential benefits for the event.

All of this remains in the exploratory stage with no technology or course of action set at this point.