Here is the trouble with City Councilman Gary Silbiger’s 8-year-old laundry list of special, narrow-niche causes, a City Hall wit said this morning:
“You can’t tell whether they are going into or coming out of the washer or dryer.”
One week after new School Board member Karlo Silbiger tangled — inartfully, some would say — with School District Supt. Dr. Myrna Rivera Cote, by email, over her alleged inattention to his special agenda interests, his father followed a similar script at last night’s City Council meeting.
Councilman Gary Silbiger flared at City Manager Mark Scott for the identical reason, and the outcome was a little saltier.
For nine, tense at times, minutes, they dueled over arguably arcane subjects that seemed to leave the three-man Council majority slightly bemused.
It was not quite the Gunfight at the City Council Corral. Thespianship must have been a prisoner of war. It was not evident in Council Chambers. This was deep-in-the-weeds stuff, the antithesis of riveting drama.
But the crossfire was as woolly as rhetorical exchanges are likely to become during the tenure of the dapper and gentlemanly Mr. Scott. The City Manager tried to close off the debate by telling the father the same thing the Superintendent told his son the week before:
He Said, He Said
When the Council, as a body or as a majority, gives him direction, he will happily embrace and follow through.
Until then, he suggested he is not going to accept marching orders from a single member.
Mr. Scott has been in office quite long enough to familiarize himself with the elder Mr. Silbiger’s M.O. For the sake of context, the City Manager also knows Mr. Silbiger has a lengthy history of being a minority vote, and a lone wolf, on matters small and large.
Revealing little external evidence of how he really felt, perhaps Mr. Scott’s sternest retort to his patience-testing foe was:
“This idea of constantly, at the City Council meetings, pushing, pushing for dates (to have the Councilman’s pet causes agendized) is, frankly, getting to be old.
“If I could do it, I would. I just can’t sit here and take direction from one Council member at a time and give dates when it is something the whole City Council ought to be directing.”
And Here Is The Way It Was
Mr. Silbiger was unmoved, insistently asserting that he was right and the City Manager was in error.
“The public gains confidence,” said the Councilman, “when they see issues that we’ve already agreed to have agendized, actually discussed. They are waiting to perform their democratic process by having the agenda item on those three issues and others. We want to go ahead. We already have decided, three or more of us, that those are items…”
Repeating charges he frequently has aimed at the boss since Mr. Scott became CEO eight months ago — delaying relatively obscure items he believes are years’ overdue for the agenda — Mr. Silbiger suddenly was placed on the defensive, but only for an eyeblink, when Mr. Scott returned his fire for the first time. Mildly.
After sitting in near silence for two-thirds of a year while Mr. Silbiger often pressed his almost automatic Once Again button to spray dereliction of obligations charges on three different subjects at the City Manager, Mr. Scott snapped:
Never heard of them, he said.
The difference between this night and all others in Mr. Scott’s tenure was that he did not simply respond succinctly, wheel around and walk away.
Although it may have been a difference without a distinction to his antagonist, Mr. Scott stood stubbornly stationarily. He kept knocking the rhetorical ball back to Mr. Silbiger’s side of the net.
“I am getting a little tired of being accused of dragging my feet on subjects I’ve never heard about,” the City Manager said.
“I don’t know how to be polite in responding to questions like that.
“It’s just not true that anybody is dragging their feet on this thing.
“I am starting to feel pretty resentful of it. And I am sorry to say that.”
Whether standing in mid-hurricane or seated in a porch swing on a becalmed summer evening, Mr. Silbiger has been a tower of unflappability throughout his two terms on the dais.
By his expression and his permanently flat tone of voice, an observer would be pressed to discern whether Mr. Silbiger just has been contradicted or won the lottery.
“Well, I am trying to get (agenda) dates…” Mr. Silbiger said, barely audibly, when the City Manager interrupted.
“The City Council never has given me direction to do any of those, despite the fact you insist the Council has,” said Mr. Scott.
In spite of Mr. Silbiger’s often-claimed charge that he has the Council’s backing, Mr. Scott said he never has unearthed a scintilla of evidence.
Still, Mr. Scott insisted on cloaking his responses with silky, inoffensive locution. “With all apologies,” he began, “I can’t give you dates on something where I don’t even know what the assignment is.”
As is his custom, Mr. Silbiger never varied his attack tactics, just kept reiterating his neon mantras. When he was wearing down, he deferred to his most (or only) reliable ally, Chris Armenta, who renewed his friend’s campaign.
The Final Score
After all of that ammunition had been shot toward the night sky, the gentlemen reluctantly laid down their arms. Silently, they stole away from the battlefield, ostensibly content that the subject of “City Council priorities” will be examined even more closely at a Monday night Study Session later this month.
