Twice in the past six weeks the Merced City Council has broken its regular routine of meeting on the first and third Monday of the month to call "special meetings". Instead of waiting until its next regularly scheduled meeting, the council has met to vote on items its says need urgent action.

What's so important in Merced these days? Dealing with the impact of the housing bust.

In both cases, the council called special meetings to vote on actions that directly address foreclosures and a frozen real estate market.

At a June special meeting, the council approved a new policy that allows Realtors to turn on the water at foreclosed houses. (Usually only a property owner can set up a water account.) The theory is that watering the dead lawns on foreclosed houses will make it easier for Realtors to sell the foreclosed houses, which will lead to less neighborhood blight.

At last night's special meeting, the council addressed another form of blight: abandoned subdivisions. The council voted on a plan to let bonding companies take over infrastructure work that developers failed to complete in Highland Park and Bellevue Ranch East.

Among the work that the bonding companies are taking over is an incomplete bike path at Highland Park. The path, or lack thereof, has drawn a lot of citizen complaints.

City officials said they called last night's special meeting because they wanted work to start on the unfinished path right away. The council has a meeting on Monday - couldn't the situation have waited three days? My guess is that the city wanted some good press on the bike path situation.

It's about time. I checked the Sun-Star's archives and was surprised to realize that I first wrote about that incomplete path back in May 2007, when I wrote a Tip List column about it.

More than a year later, that little Tip List column on B1 has turned into an A1 story - all thanks to a special meeting.