Just as mysteriously, he stopped short.
Why he did it at all remained unsettled.
His act was as opaque as he ever has been.
That Mr. Vera acted unilaterally is hardly unusual. One-man undertakings have been a hallmark of his three terms at City Hall. Even though his colleagues think they understand him, they, too, were as vexed and puzzled as the audience.
Bristling with independence, Mr. Vera proposed stripping the Treasurer of a central responsibility, shifting the Revenue Division of the office upstairs to the City Controller. “The Treasurer is overloaded,” he said. “This could ease her workload.”
These two vaguely provocative lines became his mantra for the next few minutes, the closest that he came to an explanation.
Scarcely incidental to the process was the fact that Crystal Alexander, the Treasurer, profoundly disagreed with the mayor, as he realized.
Oddly, her presence was ignored.
Not that she ever was intended to play even the smallest role in the projected dismantling.
Mayor Was Champion of the Unexpected
Politically for the mayor, this was a meteor out of the night sky, an act unconnected to any event that had gone before, entirely out of context. As quickly as it struck, that was how speedily it flamed out.
The little scenario was mindful of an airplane flight that ended ten cities short of its advertised destination.
Mr. Vera’s instant reorganization of the Treasurer’s office did not appear to be organized or substantively researched.
At this critical moment of perplexing juxtaposition, the City Treasurer sat prominently at the desk from where all staff members dialogue with the City Council.
Stunned, composed and roundly ignored, Ms. Alexander was treated as a non-person. Without ever being consulted, she listened to the mayor describe this intended dismemberment of her office.
Logically, she may have been seething internally. It never showed.
As the air noisily fizzled out of his experiment, the mayor was easily dissuaded from his chosen course.
After the mayor introduced the item, two members of the public asked to speak, and they were as confused as anyone else at the way Mr. Vera was drawing the scenario.
What Was the Rush?
“Why not wait and see how the election comes out?” asked Bill Reid.
Sue McCabe, who retired six years ago as City Treasurer, elaborated on the point. “Making piecemeal changes (before Election Day) would create chaos in both the Treasurer’s and Budget offices,” she charged.
With disarming meekness, Mr. Vera said, compliantly, “I agree. Tonight was just to point out that the City Treasurer is overloaded.”
Noting later that “the (Treasurer’s) department needs help,” Mr. Vera added, tantalizingly, “I don’t know if Ms. Alexander agrees.”
All he had to do was ask the Treasurer, seated a few feet in front of him.
Typically for her, Ms. Alexander came to the meeting fortified with not only voluminous documents to respond to any possible question but a comprehensive delineation of her office’s responsibilities. In detail. As many copies as anyone wanted.
She was so prepped she could have told Mr. Vera the Labor Day temperature in the smallest town in India for the year 2009.
Had she been permitted to speak, these are the knifing words with which she would have begun:
“The agenda item provides no professional analysis to the City Council by which a reasoned discussion could have taken place.”
Ms. Alexander did not use the term blindsided, but that was the impression left by a memorandum that the plainly upset officer composed and sent out on Monday afternoon to Chief Administrative Officer Jerry Fulwood, Asst. CAO Martin Cole, City Atty. Carol Schwab and Personnel Director Serena Wright.
They got an eyeful of withering criticism.
Laying Out Her Complaint
She complained that information on the agenda item was not available to her, the target, “until it was placed on the city’s website for general public review at approximately 4 p.m. on Thursday, March 9. It was not discussed more than thirty minutes in advance of its unveiling with any member of (my office). The attachments which are listed in the report are not the ones provided to me or the public via the website. Further, this item did not appear for the last several weeks on the weekly tentative City council Agenda listings provided by the CAO’s office.”
Ms. Alexander asked and exhaustively answered five questions about the functions of her office.
“Several more points could be raised,” she said in appending a note at the end of the queries. “But that would belabor the point at this time. If anyone is interested in hearing the rest, please contact me.”
Had this involved a third-tier position in an obscure department, it would not have disturbed the air.
But, coming as it did four weeks before the April 11 election in which the City Treasurer is a sensitive and crucial player, made Mr. Vera’s action the more bewildering.
Voters will be asked if they want to trade in the old City Charter for a new one. If they vote for change, the offices of the Treasurer and the City Clerk will become appointive rather than elective. Proponents of change say this would guarantee that the officeholders would be solid professionals. Ms. Alexander has further changes in mind.
For the last two months, while Mr. Vera continually changed his mind about whether to run for re-election, the future of the Treasurer’s office has been bandied about as if it were a flimsy kite in a stiff March wind.
At least overtly at the meeting, the mayor appeared to be without allies in his quest to reshape the Treasurer’s office on the eve of an election intended to do that. No one came to his defense.
Doing the Preparatory Work
Ms. Alexander has been working avidly for months to place all financial and human furniture in the Treasurer’s office in readiness for a thorough makeover after Election Day.
Her activities have been reported on and are widely known.
Suddenly, came lightning in the form of the mayor.
As the stung star and the unmistakable bullseye, Ms. Alexander was the evidently unwelcome, disinvited guest.
Postscript
Mr. Vera introduced the agenda item in an abbreviated monologue by returning to his favorite rhetorical strategy, establishing historical legitimacy. He traced the genesis of his proposal to a motive that had its seeds in his first term a decade ago.
What made the volatile but mercifully brief tableau Halloween-strange was that it was a single member of the City Council saying, I would like to do something unexpected, only to quickly add, I have changed my mind.
