While the long-rumored departure of Parks and Recreation Director Bill LaPointe, Mr. Mystery, remained officially unreported this afternoon, City Hall resembled one of those smouldering Western European cities that reposed in smoky silence immediately after World War II. Four key chairs are empty:
City Manager, Chief Financial Officer, Fire Chief, and Parks and Recreation Director.
With the City Manager — meaning the Old One and the Temporary New One — taking today off, City Hall felt like an echo chamber.
Conditions won’t improve as the day goes on.
Unlike even the recent past, when there used to be a City Council meeting every Monday at 7, regardless of the weather and a gaping lack of business, the Council is dark tonight.
Meanwhile, as with athletes, a scorecard is needed to determine when the Council meets.
When the Permanent New City Manager is named later this spring, he or she may favor a different schedule for City Council meetings from the present strategy that was designed by Mark Scott.,
City Hall ain’t what it used to be, and, equally, this is not your father’s City Council.
As one of the most colorful Council careers in modern times slogs to a close, even though this is merely the Ides of March, Gary Silbiger will sit on the dais for only two more meetings before he is term-limited.
His final two appearances will be next Monday, March 22, and three weeks from now, Monday, April 5, even though he does not formally leave office until the end.
Why His Agenda Stalled
Having ambitiously stirred more dust than all of his colleagues cumulatively — both positive and negative — Mr. Silbiger appears destined to go out just the way he didn’t want, as a lamb.
During the past eight years, most of his progressive initiatives quietly have been put — effectively if not technically — on hold until he returns to civilian life. Most colleagues in most instances disagreed with him.
And then there is the heavily veiled departure of the always congenial Mr. LaPointe.
City Hall was closed yesterday. Appending one final irony to Mr. LaPointe’s meandering five-year term, Sunday was identified, in a narrowly circulated email, as his final day at work.
In a succinct dispatch to the tiniest circle of insiders, Mr. LaPointe said he was accepting a golden parachute into retirement that Mr. Scott has been offering for the past two months.
It is not likely a volume of Mr. LaPointe’s abruptly ended stint will be written in the near future because so much of his time here was clouded by either a lack of clarity or disputes.
