I find it amusing when I read an article in thefrontpageonline.com headlined Belated Discovery of Controversial Policy Sparks Sparks.
Then I start to think about it. It’s not amusing. It is sad.
From 2004 to 2007, I sat on the City Agenda Committee as the Police Dept. representative. This committee met every week to prepare the agendas for the upcoming City Council meetings and to prioritize the agendas up to a month in advance.
I remember seeing one Council member’s agenda items sitting on the pending list for more than a year without any action.
Definition of an item on the pending list is usually, an item waiting for some type of staff action to be completed, before it could be placed on the Council agenda.
Another definition for some items placed on the pending list is, an item pending the Council member placing the item on the list forgetting about the item so it could be dropped.
Some Council members were persistent. and their items would stay on the pending list for years and never get agendized.
Just about everyone on city staff involved in this process knew that any single Council member could request an item be agendized (except for the current Council members). Every agenda item that is prepared is not published before the City Attorney and the City Manager approve the agenda each week.
This Is No Accident
Items that are lost or misplaced in the city of Culver City are not random happenings.
How many times someone say have we heard over the years:
“Look, everyone. We can balance our budget. We found an extra $2 million.”
Everyone is happy.
They balance the budget and life goes on with no questions asked.
I always thought a City Cuncil would want to know who lost or misplaced $2 million of the public’s money in the first place. Or was it just a random act by an overworked civil servant.
Ari Noonan uses words like “modest,” “overworked” and “exhausted” to describe city staff.
I would use words like over-sized, inexperienced, underqualified and poorly led.
The City Council members are part-time publicly elected officials who must rely on a staff that is efficient, qualified, experienced, honest and ethical. Without that, the City Council will be ineffective and the community will suffer.
If I were City Manager Jerry Fulwood, I would shy away from making statements using the words “never,” “anything” or “transparent.”
As for the appearance of anger in Mr. Fulwood, my guess is that it is focused on the unsuspecting staff member(s) who brought forth these lost policies of the past. Little do these unsuspecting staff member(s) realize they have reached the pinnacle of their careers with the city of Culver City.
Or maybe it was a staff member who has already come to that realization?
Mr. Smith may be contacted at scsinvest@aol.com
