After watching last Monday’s City Council meeting and city staff’s financial report of doom and gloom, it appears to be the same story all over again.
If the City Council continues to follow the advice of the current city staff, the only graph that they presented that will prove accurate is the one showing the Reserve Fund being totally depleted in a couple of years.
The plans and predictions presented by city staff are geared to maintain a system of city government that is extremely management top- heavy, filled with numerous unnecessary positions that do little or no work.
Employee health insurance, city parks and community organizations asking for help in their charity fundraising activities — those are not the reasons that we have a $4 million deficit. What are the city’s plans to alleviate this shortfall?
Maybe new scrutiny of employee contract negotiations?
Why didn’t we scrutinize employee contracts in the past?
Will this additional scrutiny cost more than the $125 per hour we currently pay consultant Jack Hoffman? Or is it included in his contract.
The citizens of Culver City will have to tighten their belts and pay more taxes and fees in order for city government to keep its belt on the last notch.
The other suggestion was to eliminate temporary and part-time workers.
First, this will save the city very little money.
Second, it has been my experience in the last 31 years that temporary and part-time employees were among the hardest workers the city had. These part time and non-management employees, in many cases, are the people that the community deals with everyday to solve their problems or deliver services.
In many instances, these are the employees assigned the work of city managers so they can have more time for personal business away from the city or for their own personal promotion.
Maybe the City Council should ask non-management city employees how many hours they spent on the staff’s financial report, gathering information, preparing reports, making graphs, power-point presentations, copying and delivering documents.
They might be surprised by what they would find.
My father was a big fan of Will Rogers. I grew up listening to him quote Will Rogers all the time. I have found two timeless, common-sense statements by Will Rogers, that are meaningful today:
• “After eating an entire bull, a mountain lion felt so good that it started roaring. He kept it up until a hunter came along and shot him. The moral: When you’re full of bull keep your mouth shut.”
• “There are three kinds of men. The ones that learn by reading. The few who learn by observing. The rest have to pee on the electric fence and find out for themselves.”
Mr. Smith may be contacted at scsinvest@sbcglobal.net
