Something new happened in the city council meeting of October 29, 2013.
A city representative teed up the ball and the mayor knocked it out of the park.
City staff wanted to make a pitch to the Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) promoting a scaled down bicycle program as a trial. I wrote about the original program in A government agency with some common sense.
The city representative wanted city council to know what city staff was up to and get council’s approval or disapproval of the project.
The city’s chief sustainability officer (I wonder how many sustainability officers we have) started his presentation.
The mayor interrupted. Essentially his concerns were:
- The presentation being made to council and the public was not the same one that had been made to council (sitting as the legislative review committee) the day before.
- The proposed project required money for operation and maintenance once it was installed. Council had been told originally (at the time the full project was being considered) that the project would be self funding and would pay for itself.
- City staff wanted money for a feasibility study to be conducted once the trail project was over
The city manager denied knowledge of differences in the presentation. The mayor essentially said that he did not appreciate being lied to. He said he was insulted. A city representative indicated that he feared that the presentation to be made to the MPO was different still.
The city manager explained the money was from federal sources and would not cost the city taxpayers. The mayor said that he did not think that was a good idea.
The chief sustainability officer explained that the feasibility study was more of a “master plan” document. The mayor indicated that we should do our planning before beginning a project, not after starting one.
Governance
After several strained exchanges the mayor directed that the item be deleted from the agenda. Council voted to delete the item. He then thanked the city representative for bringing the situation forward.
It appears in this case that city council performed it’s function and gave city staff clear marching orders.
Visibility
It now seems that council may be aware of the slight of hand that staff performs in front council.
We all remember city staff telling council that they could move out of city hall for $33 million. That number is now over $70 million and climbing.
The $50 million ball park presentation came from city staff also.
It seems that they have not learned that telling the truth is easier than remembering what lie you told last time.
We deserve better
Brutus
elpasospeak 
Good post. It is difficult sometimes to tell how city staff gets to their recommendations and analyses. Sometimes they try to put together what they think CC wants to hear and sometimes I don’t really think they know what to do, e.g., the QoL projects.
In the case of the stadium, Wilson obviously downloaded what MS told her to present and yielded the floor to Populus, that gave the building cost estimate. The city engineer has recently said he was bypassed in the process and pleaded, “Me no Alamo” to CC when pressed for the reasons why the stadium costs were increasing.
All of this was bundled into the business case by Carmen A-C and presented that day to a CC that wanted to hear that it was all going to pay for itself. But it was mostly crap as we have come to see. So in this case, city staff was playing along with what they knew CC wanted to hear and subsequent grandstanding by CC, especially Rep. Niland, was just that – grandstanding to avoid taking responsibility for drinking the MS Kool-Aid when all six wanted to drink it anyway.
This makes me wonder what we pay city staff to do, especially staff that has fiduciary responsibility on our behalf. Do we pay them to critically evaluate these proposals and present the findings and alternatives, or do we pay them to tell us what we (CC) want to hear? In the case of the bicycle program, it appears that staff just doesn’t know what to do and decided to punt.
Nor do we have the advantage of independent citizen watchdogs who can vet these proposals to provide an informed 2nd opinion, thus neutralizing the city staff bias to say what they think the CC wants to hear or not say anything at all or be all over the map.
This is a reason why I do not support continuing with a CM form of government and so stated in a guest column that The Inc. was kind enough to print last week: We need a CEO mayor, not a city manager.
http://www.elpasoinc.com/opinion/guest_columns/article_fb3e4366-44a2-11e3-805c-001a4bcf6878.html
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I enjoyed reading your column and thank you taking the time to care.
I continue to be amazed at how seemingly indifferent our fellow citizens are.
That is until their particular ox is gored.
Brutus
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I will have more to say about city hall culture and its impact on what we ultimately get for our taxes. In the meantime, I am pleased by Mayor Leeser calling something BS when it clearly is BS instead of politely side-stepping the issue. What was Wilson doing, anyway?
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