We're in the morass known as budget workshops. These are the exercises by which the community is supposed to come together to examine and make suggestions about the proposed budget for the coming year. The budget is initially estimated by our Manager, and her employees and advisors, then reviewed privately with each of the Commissioners, then presented formally at the workshops. It is the Manager's expressed fantasy, at least as she expressed it last night, that the central activity of the workshop is the solicitation of public input. You'd think she knew the Mayor better than that by now.
So to come back to the theme of this post, it's not only a good thing if Commissioners understand and inquire about the budget. It's essential. They, not anyone else, have to vote to approve it. To aid them in this responsibility, they are presented the budget in advance, given an opportunity to read it, and given all the opportunity they want to meet with the Manager, and the Finance Director, and the Police Chief, and the Public Works Director, and the Recreation Director, and anyone else they want, so the budget will be as clear to them as they could want. Now therein lies an interesting curiosity. Four of the five Commissioners did see the budget in advance. And those four did meet with Village staff. (Take a guess. The answer lies in the post entitled "Taxation Without Representation" in this blog.) So one Commissioner arrived, another story, with absolutely no advance familiarity with the budget, never having picked up his packet. Funny enough, that Commissioner also used up more time than any other interrogating Village staff about the things he didn't know. But he wasn't trying to find out. He was just criticizing and blaming. As usual. The accusations just keep on coming. (If you can't be bothered to look, and you weren't there-- only five of us were there, so you have loads of company-- I'm talking of course about Commissioner Dr Cooper, our current lead misfit.)
You can't argue with the curiosity and interest that stimulate, or should stimulate, examination of the budget, and asking questions about it. This, as I say, is a good thing. And if Bob Anderson saw that $14,500 were set aside for tree maintenance, and he thought that didn't seem to represent an important enough investment in the protection and expansion of our canopy, it would be a good thing if he said so, which he did, and suggested we dedicate more money to this function, which he also did. The problem comes when Commissioners, who are not municipal managers, not arborists, have not made calls to vendors and other municipal staffs, decide that they should direct our Manager not only to be more ambitious and concerted about tree mainenance, but they actually debate, as in take the time to express themselves, as to how many dollars should be dedicated. They admit, of course, that they don't really know, and they're just picking numbers, wondering then which other initiatives will have to be shorted. This is where the good thing goes bad. The job of the Commission is to tell the Manager that we as a Village want to devote ourselves more to maintenance of our canopy, not to make specific, and irrational, decisions for her. The word we used for this in the last Commission was micromanaging. Apparently, it's still going on. And if you had been there, which you weren't, unless you are Janey Anderson, Chuck Ross, Linda Dillon, Dan Samaria, or I, you would have seen what a dumb and aimless exercise this was. You would have heard our dear Mayor bemoan the amount of money we seem to spend cleaning up past messes, immediately after which he suggested we not be too generous with the tree maintenance part of the budget. Sort of answered your own question there, didn't you, Mayor? Or you would have heard Commissioner Dr Cooper say we caused the deaths of some of our trees by not pruning them, then immediately say he would rather see us invest in increasing the number of trees planted instead of maintaining the ones we have. Do you ever listen to yourself, Commissioner Dr? And you would have heard him extoll the superiority of the oak, the tree he has spent his whole tenure, and a little before, loving to hate and rail against.
Now it would have helped Commissioner Dr Cooper if he had picked up his packet in advance, if he had read it, and if he asked any questions of anyone. He might have known what he was talking about, and what the rest of us were talking about, if that had been his aim. It would also had helped if he had not come 1 1/2 hours late to the first workshop, if he had not left it 45 minutes early, and if he had not come over an hour late to the second workshop. Perhaps he was conscious of his lapses. Perhaps he was self-conscious about them. They do say the best defense is a good offense, and it may be just that vague sense of embarrassment that caused him, as is frankly typical for him, to launch into criticisms of others, blaming them for the usual round of poor judgment or even criminal behavior. You think I'm making this up, right? Perhaps he would have appreciated the Manager's suggestion that we need to elevate our newest employee to greater responsibility, including finding grants, instead of his raking this employee over the coals for possibly being inadequately skilled and experienced in grant-writing, as well as possibly lacking other skills and credentials. Who knew this budget workshop would turn out to be Commissioner Dr Cooper's opportunity to conduct a job interview of someone already selected by the Manager, whose job it is to hire and fire? The best defense, indeed.
And on that important topic of grants, a topic the Commissioner Dr correctly reiterated has long been near and dear to him, the Commissioner Dr was frankly outspoken in demanding we find quality grant-writers. In his completely uninformed opinion, our new employee is apparently not adequately credentialled for this task. What the Commissioner Dr conveniently forgot, and to which he did not respond when reminded*, is that one of his special offers to us when he ran for office was that he himself happened to have abundant experience in writing grant applications, and he would use his considerable talents and experience to help us write them. If he is elected. Well, he was. He fails, more commonly than any other Commissioner, to attend meetings, he does not attend other formal functions, he refuses to attend informal functions, and don't hold your breath waiting for him to step forward to help us write a grant application. His self-appointed mission is to blame and accuse others. Actually lifting a finger is not part of the job description he accepts.
The Mayor did what the Mayor does. He took the time, lots and lots of time, to arrive at his best understanding of some of the issues. Why this didn't happen before the workshops is not known. The result was that he, and the Commission, completely monopolized the workshops. The few of us who bothered to show up were given our standard and perfunctory three minutes, and were then welcome to sit down and shut up. My guess is we were welcome to suck our thumbs, if we wished. Any other attempt to intervene or confront, when the foolishness was rampant and intolerable, was met by a suggestion that we pursue "private conversations" with Commissioners later, and outside. In fact, the Mayor protected Commissioner Dr Cooper from having to answer Commissioner Anderson's attempt to elucidate one of Cooper's more outrageous lies with the same suggestion. The Mayor was, however, more graceful than usual in making gestures of establishing consensus among Commissioners. It was a nice touch.
Commissioner Watts was generally reasonable in her approach. She became as overly detailed and specific as the rest on occasion, and during the second workshop, she launched into a speech that seemed somewhat uncharacteristic for her. If you know "Alice's Restaurant," you will remember near the end when the man at the draft office began to read endless fine print, going on and on for "45 minutes" about something no one could follow. Commissioner Watts didn't speak for 45 minutes, but the effect was the same. Words like "cocaine," and "caffeine," were mentioned by some of us. One peculiarity, just to demonstrate how we spent our time, was the Commissioner's concern about the Manager's suggestion to add 1/2 FTE to the police. The Commissioner wanted to be sure everyone agreed this was a good idea. So she asked the Chief if he agreed. He did. Then she asked Commander Atesiano. Yup, he was good with it, too. Captain Churchman? Check, Commissioner. I guess she thought you just can't be too careful before you agree to let the Manager do her job. And anyway, who would be a better judge of how to manage a municipality and its many functions, including a police force, than someone who teaches XV th century art history to college students? How about someone who teaches middle school subjects to impaired students? A library sciences professor maybe? A paralegal? What about a retiree who used to supervise people who ran a printing press?
Should our elected officials oversee the direction the Manager takes, to make sure it reflects community sentiments? Of course they should. That's why they're there. But none of us needs them to micromanage, or to try to pretend to know and make judgments on things that are not theirs to know. There is a reason the Village agreed to move from failed attempts to have Commissioners manage municipal departments, to the use of a professional manager. It's regressive and foolish to try to tell the Manager how to do her job. We should tell her what's important to us, and how much we think we're prepared to spend. It's not our job to nickel and dime her.
*Correction. My error. At the end of the second workshop, the Commissioner Dr did in fact explain his failure to help us get grants. It appears that the Village's decision not to paint lines on the streets, representing some sort of walking path, a favorite proposal of the Commissioner Dr's, led him to decide to go on strike against the Village. This is why, according to his explanation, he refuses to help us with grants, and it may be why he refuses to come to any Village events. He's punishing us for not doing what he wanted done. Just so's you know.
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