Better than a shredder

December 22, 2015

Part of the mysteriously unsigned December 2, 2015 “Financial Adviser Request for Qualification Report” lets us know that our city staff is destroying documents, presumably so that we cannot see them.

A Tuesday, October 13, 2015 email from our city’s chief financial officer to our city attorney read this way:

Hi Sylvia,

I skimmed the attorney documents you sent to me yesterday, paying particular attention to the sections of interest.  I did not save a copy, and your e-mail with the attachment has been deleted from my inbox and also from my deleted items box. 

There you have it.

We deserve better

Brutus

10 Comments | City government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Rent a manager

December 21, 2015

How low we have sunk?

City council recently required the city manager to tell us who the acting city manager(s) will be while he is out of town on vacation.

They further required that the designated people not be implicated in the current mess we are watching unfold.

The result is that one of the designees is not even a city employee.  Somehow I doubt that this contractor can legally do the job.

Also of interest is that the number two person in the city’s management structure (the chief performance officer) was not named as the acting city manager.  Was she involved in the failed attempt to get rid of our financial advisor firm?  Or would becoming the acting city manager interfere with her other interests outside of the city?

Either our bench is so shallow that we have to resort to a city vendor, or a bunch of the senior city staff is involved in the current mess.

What is really remarkable is that we do not have a deputy or assistant city manager.  Our city charter requires that the city manager name an acting city manager whenever the city manager is absent or disabled.

Shouldn’t we have someone designated permanently so that if our city manager were to be in an unfortunate accident we would have a city manager?

We deserve better

Brutus

5 Comments | City government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Look, but not too closely

December 20, 2015

I wanted to take a look at the city’s internal reports about the financial advisor mess.

Last week I found this page:

cityfinancialadvisorreportsmissing1

Following the links I got this each time:

cityfinancialadvisorreportsmissing2

We deserve better

Brutus

1 Comment | City government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Just for show?

December 19, 2015

The district 8 city representative has a link on her web page titled “Street Closures”.  I followed the link Saturday, December 12, 2015 to see what she had to tell us.

This is what came up:

nilandstreetclosures

Wasn’t that good?

Actually the closure happened back in November.

We deserve better

Brutus

7 Comments | City government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Can this be true?

December 18, 2015

A citizen told me the other day that the reason we see sections of roads blocked off with orange cones for long periods of time without any work being done is that the contract for the cones is separate from the contract for the construction.

Evidently one contract calls for a company to place cones at a given location beginning on a certain date and ending on another date.

If the construction crew is not able to start at the same time we have to endure needless inconvenience.

It seems like this would be easy to fix.

We deserve better

Brutus

10 Comments | City government, State Government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

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