Dysfunction Junction
Twice in the last five days city emergency crews have been out on River Mill Road working in the dark to repair underground utilities. Their appearance, which I hadn't seen at all in the previous 10 years, comes a few weeks after city workers dug up parts of many lawns while "upgrading" water valves in preparation for the unwanted sidewalks that we will soon be getting.
I guess it could just be a coincidence that the emergency repairs were required after the city set out to make some improvements. But I can't help but see these incidents as emblematic of how our local government operates--and a warning that it's always possible to make a bad situation worse.
Consider the Common Council and its deliberations of what to do about the city manager. A former mayor, the Northwestern and numerous individuals have already registered their amazement about how things have unfolded, with a duly elected Council member, Bryan Bain, disqualified somehow from taking part. What in the world is going on?
Well one theory holds that City Attorney Warren Kraft has rigged the process in favor of his boss the city manager by recommending a lawyer who would find a way to derail any effort to get rid of Richard Wollangk.
Another theory, or part of the same theory referenced above, is that one or more Council members are having second thoughts about the wisdom of firing the city manager. Whatever his deficiencies, he has done what he was told to do. It's really the fault of this and previous Councils for not doing a better job of articulating what he needs to do and making him do it.
The city staffers who have drawn the ire of Council members are some of the department heads. If Wollangk were to agree to dump a couple of them, then he might garner enough support to hang on. (With Bain out of the voting picture for the moment, a tie vote is a likely outcome, and that would keep Wollangk in his post.)
There aren't good alternatives here. Give Wollangk his walking papers, and watch city initiatives and planning grind to a halt just in time for budget season. A national search for a successor (and nasty arguments about paying more money to attract a more dynamic personality) would waste some more time and help keep redevelopment efforts from moving ahead.
Or the Council could take a deep breath and emerge from its secret sessions to announce that the city doesn't need new faces at City Hall, just new attitudes. (From the recent sidewalk discussion, we know that a majority of Council members has the ability to keep straight faces while talking nonsense out of both sides of their mouths. So don't doubt that this could happen.)
Clearly what the Common Council needs to do next is ... change the subject. Maybe it could identify some more streets without sidewalks and make that the focus of attention.
Is a new form of government needed, maybe an elected mayor with veto power or one who presides over a group of alderpersons elected ward by ward? I don't really think so.
What needs to happen is that the city has to find a way to enlarge its tax base. Plain and simple. Everything else is just a distraction.
It ain't sidewalks. It ain't smoking. It's taxing cottonwood trees (only kidding).
Granted--enlarging the tax base isn't a trivial task. If it were easy to do, it would have already been done.
But appointing an economic development commission or hiring a new city manager and offloading the task to someone else won't work either.
The Council was elected to provide the city with leadership. A first step is to define clearly the desired outcome, and the second step is to establish benchmarks and intermediate goals. The third step is to start working in that direction.
Time's a-wasting, here in Dysfunction Junction.
I guess it could just be a coincidence that the emergency repairs were required after the city set out to make some improvements. But I can't help but see these incidents as emblematic of how our local government operates--and a warning that it's always possible to make a bad situation worse.
Consider the Common Council and its deliberations of what to do about the city manager. A former mayor, the Northwestern and numerous individuals have already registered their amazement about how things have unfolded, with a duly elected Council member, Bryan Bain, disqualified somehow from taking part. What in the world is going on?
Well one theory holds that City Attorney Warren Kraft has rigged the process in favor of his boss the city manager by recommending a lawyer who would find a way to derail any effort to get rid of Richard Wollangk.
Another theory, or part of the same theory referenced above, is that one or more Council members are having second thoughts about the wisdom of firing the city manager. Whatever his deficiencies, he has done what he was told to do. It's really the fault of this and previous Councils for not doing a better job of articulating what he needs to do and making him do it.
The city staffers who have drawn the ire of Council members are some of the department heads. If Wollangk were to agree to dump a couple of them, then he might garner enough support to hang on. (With Bain out of the voting picture for the moment, a tie vote is a likely outcome, and that would keep Wollangk in his post.)
There aren't good alternatives here. Give Wollangk his walking papers, and watch city initiatives and planning grind to a halt just in time for budget season. A national search for a successor (and nasty arguments about paying more money to attract a more dynamic personality) would waste some more time and help keep redevelopment efforts from moving ahead.
Or the Council could take a deep breath and emerge from its secret sessions to announce that the city doesn't need new faces at City Hall, just new attitudes. (From the recent sidewalk discussion, we know that a majority of Council members has the ability to keep straight faces while talking nonsense out of both sides of their mouths. So don't doubt that this could happen.)
Clearly what the Common Council needs to do next is ... change the subject. Maybe it could identify some more streets without sidewalks and make that the focus of attention.
Is a new form of government needed, maybe an elected mayor with veto power or one who presides over a group of alderpersons elected ward by ward? I don't really think so.
What needs to happen is that the city has to find a way to enlarge its tax base. Plain and simple. Everything else is just a distraction.
It ain't sidewalks. It ain't smoking. It's taxing cottonwood trees (only kidding).
Granted--enlarging the tax base isn't a trivial task. If it were easy to do, it would have already been done.
But appointing an economic development commission or hiring a new city manager and offloading the task to someone else won't work either.
The Council was elected to provide the city with leadership. A first step is to define clearly the desired outcome, and the second step is to establish benchmarks and intermediate goals. The third step is to start working in that direction.
Time's a-wasting, here in Dysfunction Junction.
posted by Miles Maguire at 9:45 AM
139 comments
