Written by Here are a few more thoughts from last night’s council meeting.
Most importantly, it has become obvious to me that the Mayor does not understand the rationale or the goal behind a public process. We have a public process so that all the parties affected by new rulemaking, laws, expenditures, and other city actions can ensure that we are getting the best results possible, with the most equitable and fair outcome. This public process ensures that we get the best product out there, and spend public resources in the wisest possible way. Everyone who has input to give should be valued for making the end-product better.
But it seems our mayor, and perhaps some councilmember’s, see the public process as a legal nuisance, that slows down the implementation of their “good” ideas. This is obvious from the number of citizens who have reported playing a sort of shell game with the administration, showing up at hearings and being told it’s the wrong one, and then missing the “critical” one because they were out of town or they didn’t hear about it…only to be told that they missed their chance for input. This does not come across as an administration that is trying to get the public’s input.
This was obvious last night as some of the latest work from the mayor’s office had reached the council approval stage, while citizens were still telling us they had not had opportunity for input or there was much work to be done. Instead of the mayor taking council’s position of “let’s get that input as quickly as we can, and make this the right product,” the mayor read a lengthy and one-sided, pre-prepared statement alleging how many times the citizens could have made their inputs if they had wanted to.
The most bothersome issue is that she must have known this complaint was coming (she had a prepared response after all). But in advance of the meeting, instead of her picking up the phone to speak with any of the citizens involved, or let the council know that major stakeholders were not satisfied, she chose to expend city resources trying to convince us that the citizens had all the time they deserved to make their comments.
This might be understandable once, but it has become the absolute pattern with this mayor. It is the same issue we dealt with eighteen months ago at the infamous meeting in which when she tried to prevent highlands citizens from speaking at a public hearing, on the evening that brought us Lipstickgate.
Here are my suggestions to the MAYOR, to prevent another council meeting like last night.
Do:
-Think of the public as the ultimate source for the best information
-Think of citizens and businesses as partners
-Recognize that the executive branch (that’s you) must do the necessary coordination to resolve both the mayor’s concerns and the council concern’s
Do NOT:
-Bully through the public process with an already-firm result in mind
-summarily dismiss citizen suggestions
-Hold it against a working-person if they are late to, or even have to miss, a day-time meeting
-Insult a councilmember who asks to take extra time during a reading of an ordinance
And here are my suggestions to TWO OF MY FELLOW COUNCILMEMBER’S to prevent further entanglements with me.
Do :
-Treat citizens at the podium with respect and courtesy
Do NOT:
-Try to characterize every question by a council member as “another attack on city staff.” (It’s completely obvious you are using the vulnerability of our hard-working city employees, and our affection for them, to hide from accountability for your own actions and decisions.)
-Talk about campaigning for mayor while you are in city hall performing your function as a councilmember.
-Hurl insults at your fellow council members just because you were on the losing side of a vote
Recent Comments