For the viewing displeasure of our faithful PRU readers! It was one helluva long meeting, but we strongly encourage people to make the time to view the video.
Mr. Mayor, you come off like a jackass on a handful of issues. The 6th ward's Ald. Tom Carey kicked your backside on the topic of the City Manager's contract -- for a figuratively blind, squirrely guy, on rare occasions Carey's flush with nuts! And the PRU Crew thought Procedures and Regulations' Chairman Allegretti acted fairly in his recall of events surrounding severance payments.
The PRU Crew was pretty pleased with the general discussion and vote on the issue of the Facade Improvement Program and we look forward to the Council's future action -- we hope we aren't speaking too soon.
As far as the Taste of Park Ridge discussion is concerned, we were again almost taken in by the warm and fuzzy effervescent spewing. But we've now gotten a look at TOPR's 990 tax return. We've taken a good long look at their expenses, we've listened to their statements about the need to maintain a "rainy day fund," and we are more than certain it's now time for the Taste of Park Ridge, Inc. to reimburse the City for costs, gentlemen! We'll have more to say on this subject in a future posting.
PRUdos go to City Manager Jim Hock for what 7th ward Ald. Wsol described as "thinking out of the box." Despite Ald. Wsol's negative approach, we hope the Council will seriously entertain City Manager Hock's funding idea for Community Groups.
Mayor Schmidt's attempt to appeal to the ids, egos, and superegos of the Aldermen, on the subject of appointment authority for department heads, was laughable in its' transparency. Suuure, Mr. Mayor --the PRU Crew is suuure your intention is to secure the voice of the City Council by suggesting they should consider whether or not they "have a say" in the appointment process of City staff below the level of City Manager. The PRU Crew is also pretty sure it would be pretty convenient for the Mayor if that "voice" were filtered through his involvement in the process of appointing individual department heads -- an authority goal long dreamed of by his predecessor. Given the performance of the Mayor on the contract issue of the already appointed City Manager, we're going with the 2nd ward's Ald. DiPietro in agreeing, "the City Manager should manage," and any conflict in the language of article 3 should be "cleaned up" and clarified to allow the City manager to manage. Or we may be inclined to begin referring to Mayor Schmidtzkrieg as Mayor Schmidtstain -- we briefly considered using "Mayor Small Fri--," but we liked the sound of "Schmidtstain" better. Elected officials with the ability of bestowing employment on department heads is a recipe for patronage disaster -- and that's not just your average Schmidstain mess, that's 7 square miles full of manure!
Finally, PRUdos to the 5th ward's Alderman Ryan -- your suggesting the City review the process by which residential improvements are approved, especially as they pertain to land grades and drainage, is timely. We've heard about a number of problems with the City's inability to address residential engineering and construction issues, and it's about damn time the problems were addressed.
October 27, 2010
COW 10-25-2010 Video!
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21 comments:
Ah yes the old City Manager versus Mayor on hiring department heads again. Mayor Frimark has been all over this for years. Oh wait Frimark isn't Mayor anymore or is he? I'm very confused.
The city mgr's spending authority is being reduced (and a layer of bureaucratic functioning is being added) because it seems a majority on the clowncil felt there were..."issues"...with certain non-"goods and services" expenditure decisions of (up to) $20K...
...though the city mgr. definitely exceeded his authority (by $5K) in contracting the $25K that was paid to Carrie Davis...which the clowncil then completely screwed up even further...
...a few hours later, it seems a majority of the clowncil admit they (previously) approved the non-"goods and services" expenditures of up to $20K...the very expenditures which some people made a big, fat issue out of (once they knew who received the previously approved payments) as being "unauthorized," and the supposed reason they are reducing the city mgr's spending authority...
It's all clear to me now...
It is every Mayor's wet dream to control the hiring of department heads, so that they are beholden to that Mayor’s every whim. That is the whole point of a City Manager form of government as to prevent such behavior from occurring. The new Mayor seems to have found the same old Kool-Aid. Too bad.
Mayoral ability to meddle in manager hiring below the city manager level is a potential patronage problem, but what should elected officials do when big, costly problems are being caused by managers one or two levels down from the city manager and he/she won't do anything about it? We've seen that cost a pretty penny in local entities other than the City. It's easy to say "then fire the city manager," but then who runs the zoo while you shop for a new city manager and a new manager for the other slot? Not so easy. We've seen the disarray in missing the finance director - imagine more than one key slot empty! How about the Council as a whole having some say about key hirings, with that "say" narrowly conscribed? Of course, the whole problem would be minimized if there were MBO criteria in place as part of each job description...
point is, is an elected body derelict in washing its hands of a glaring personnel misfit that costs the public? I think so.
Anonymous @ 11:42,
...because it's "not so easy," you're suggesting the involvement of political creatures as an answer?
No way is that any kind of solution, or even a mitigation of any management problems.
Either the City Manager is doing his job or he's not. If he's not then yes you fire him. And yes the interim search process will be painful, but we have hired interims all the time in past. Why is this different?
Anonymous @ 11:57,
Exactly...but here's one of the big problems...
Can you tell if the city mgr. is doing his job, or not?
...just take a look at the "involvement" of the elected officials in the issue of severance payments and the city mgr's decisions on how to spend the money the elected officials admit to previously approving...
Hock got spanked every which way from Sunday for those decisions...is likely to have his spending authority cut back as a result of how he's done his job (I'm not really too concerned about that outcome...but...), and yet, the clowncil has publicly admitted to discussing and APPROVING those amounts and they also said, outloud and in public, the city mgr. didn't do anything wrong (with the exception of the Davis extra $5K)!
Again!...clear as mud!
..and these are the guys it's being suggested should "have a say" in hiring new department heads?
AAAARRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!!!
Bean I guess where you and I differ is that you see "political creatures" and I see "freely elected representatives of the people, drawn from their own community." There are good employees and good representatives, but tell me who has the biggest vested financial interest in artfully hiding screw-ups for personal advantage?
Anonymous @ 1:48,
>>"freely elected representatives of the people, drawn from their own community."<<
...oh yeah, you're right...there's a sure-fire guaranty of competence, if not a complete block against the "corrupting influences" laid before ALL politicians... What was I thinking...
..."own community"...hhhmmm, what defines that parameter?...would the State of Illinois qualify?
In answer to your question...screw-ups happen, and yes, employees the world over have an interest in hiding screw-ups. However, I'd rather deal with screw-ups than risk the unavoidable corruption of a patronage system. Like it or not...[that] is what you will get if you allow "political creatures" to become more deeply involved in what should be day-to-day, regular city management and operations.
Bean.....
Dead on. Either you have a City Manager and let them manage or you have a full time Mayor and let him handle all the day issues created by his hiring decisions. You can’t have both. Well you can, but I would hate to see what pathetic soul would want the job.
11:42 AM
You are ultimately talking about making a permanent change to how government operates as a way to take care of a temporary problem. Employees don't stay around forever. Elected officials don't either. Employee problems can be dealt with, without changing the whole way an organization operates and taking on the risks Bean talked about.
Wow. How many people are unemployed for a year Mr. Mayor? The average length of unemployment is running six months. That's the average.
The number of people unemployed for longer than six months hit an all time high in May with 6.8 million people and the numbers aren't very different now. The numbers only include the governments official counts. There are many people unemployed the government has stopped counting.
You find it hard to believe people could be unemployed for a year? I don't know what you've been smoking but it isn't doing you much good. Do you think all the foreclosures are because unemployment benefits are so great people have refused to go back to work and would rather lose their homes?
When you wanted to cut the charities I listened to your arguments and thought you had a point even though I disagreed.
Now I'm listening to you make comments about unemployment and you can't seem to believe people have been without jobs for as long as a year.
I gave you the benefit of the doubt Mr. Mayor because I thought you were just being super tough with the budget. Now I think you simply are totally out of touch with what is going on.
7:56:
Great post. I have not reached the point in the video where the Mayor makes these comments but I cannot wait to see the contest.
All he would have to do is poke around the internet to find these people do exist. Has he not heard the term "99ers"?? As of June, there were approximately 4.3 million of these folks - not having been able to find a job for over 99 weeks.
Sept 2010 - The number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks and over),
at 6.1 million, was little changed over the month but was down by 640,000
since a series high of 6.8 million in May - http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm
Some here are missing the context of the mayor's comment. He was talking about the manager's making payments to the city staff persons who were let go. The manager said if the city staff persons were out of work for a year then the city would save money by paying them instead of them filing for unemployment.
5:51 PM
You're right about the context of the Mayor's comments, but I think what people here are saying is in reaction to the Mayor questioning how many people are out of work for a year, as if he doubts that's even possible.
I watched the video and the Mayor sounds incredulous about the idea that people are out of work that long. He doesn't seem to believe that's the case for many people, and it is the case.
Put whatever "spin" on a single comment during a lengthy discussion if you want, there is however a bigger and more important issue.
I believe the question or concern is, did the City Manger have the authority to hand out these payments without even a discussion about them with City Council.
It is very easy to come up with reasons why any action was taken >after the fact<. And even if those reason sound or are legitimate the appearance of being sneaky about it is what has caused it to be in question.
If the reason that was given for these payouts was to save the city money by not having to pay unemployment, why wasn't that presented BEFORE instead of after the agreements were made and payed out?
Perhaps the city officials payed and elected need to exercise better communication. Just because the City Manager doesn't NEED permission to approve expenditures $20,000 or under, it might be in everyone's best interest to report or discuss it BEFORE the fact and not after, maybe then City Council will stop ragging on his every move and the city can start working again.
Anon@8:04 --
Perhaps you've missed something along the way -- the Mayor, Aldermen, and City Manager did discuss the payments and the reasons for them. They held these discussions in closed session.
The Mayor and Aldermen gave their approval to the City Manager for the both the payments and his reasoning. They gave their approval in closed session.
Their discussions were held, and their approval was given, to the City Manager, BEFORE the payments were made.
If you had watched the video, you would have heard at least two Aldermen confess to exactly that, while the others remain silent -- which to us indicates they don't hold different memories.
We again cannot help but feel these payments weren't a problem until less favored employees received them. Not until the glaring lack of mention and complaint for Ms. Uhlig's payment was repeatedly raised, did any of the elected officials begin to include that payment in their ragging.
Quite seriously, if there is one payment we object to most it would be Ms. Uhlig's. She is the single employee we believe thoroughly screwed the City through her separation agreement. We feel she signed her separation agreement, which included the stipulation to not file for unemployment -- a key provision -- and she accepted the payments knowing full well she had a new position coming her way.
We don't view the City Manager's actions as having been sneaky in any way, in light of the background material offered and the public admissions as to the memories of the Aldermen.
We feel the Mayor and some Aldermen, even one of the confessors, have been dishonest in their treatment of this issue. At best, we may say they suffered complete memory loss on the matter.
PRU,
O.K. I'll buy that explanation on all counts.
Things all the way around are messed up to say the very least.
I'd sure rather see solutions in a forward direction rather than looking back at who did what and why along with finger pointing.
October 29, 2010 9:22 AM
If you take away looking back at who did what and why along with finger pointing, the Mayor and the other blog wouldn't have anything to talk about.
On second thought, I like your idea!
The other blog can keep talking in ways to put a positive spin on the Mayor's piggish behavior.
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