Anyone watching the city council meeting? I admit, I’ve sort of missed the furor (busy week or two) but man is [well ‘was’ now] the fur flying!
I dunno, to me, trying to discern who’s got the right ideas, it’s the who-sounds-insanesane versus who’s-rather-sane. Like what’s with Rita removing her name placard with one with a silly phrase? What are we, in second grade? LOL. It seems like we’re back in the previous two Councils with certain people acting like bulldogs, getting an issue in their teeth and not letting go, and worrying it until they froth at the mouth. That’s really the mental imagery I get watching the two of them.
Because Bud and Rita, as usual, sound unduly, out-of-all-proportion angry. Do they listen to themselves? I’ll admit Milinazzo kind of goaded them both, and I wish he’d interject a little less aggressively and more calmly, because he was right - when Caulfield droned on (OMG did he…) about salaries of other cities’ mayors and CMs (mostly mayors - not sure how relevant that is, since as the Mr. said to me, ya don’t need a degree to become mayor)…anyway, Milinazzo interjected that those numbers weren’t right, it doesn’t take into account all the staff, and top level managers under, say, the Mayor of Boston - you can guarantee Menino has some high paying managers under him, with a budget the size of Boston. Caulfield of course missed the whole point, insisting like a child stomping his feet (I’m not kidding) that his numbers were right…the better word Milinazzo should have used is, Caulfield’s numbers were severely incomplete, not inaccurate. The info was accurate but, a poor picture of other comparable cities’ management budgets.
Franky came off very well, saying the fact that Caulfield’s information was so incomplete is the reason why obtaining the information via many experts and community members was important. She had said at the beginning of her statement that she had come in prepared to vote either no or yes, with an open mind, and I believe her - I don’t blame her for siding with the yeses, after listening to the poor arguments and attacks from Rita and Bud, versus the sane explanations from the others. Good lord.
The bottom line for me, is that the reasoning for this commission to find information is sound - Broderick and others pointed out the irony of the opposition to this given the past “public-private” advisory groups that were put together under Caulfield’s mayoral tenure.
Does it gall me that Meehan’s hand is somehow in this, even if just being the one to suggest it? Of course. I question that guy’s motivations, though not everything is nefarious. (It was hilarious though when, I think it was Broderick, pointed out that the same people objecting to this were so eager to trust the Chancellor’s numbers on the Arena without any sort of personal or independent investigation, but now everything is suspect. Wonder if the Campy/Cox crew has had a falling out with Meehan?)
I also am aware that the “other” faction in Lowell, the one that was out of “favor” for the Cox years, is the Lowell Plan. Though I haven’t really seen anything GOB come out of them, at least not in recent history - they seem to sponsor talks and pay for studies about downtown development and all, things that, honestly, are useful. I’m reserving my judgment on that.
Anyway, it passed, with Murphy and Elliot joining the noes, and Franky being the swing “yes.” Whether or not this furor (which seems very much blown out of all proportion) becomes a distraction or not remains to be seen. However, friends of mine who are very well versed in such matters have sent me info on, for instance, the Cambridge CM contract which has some very interesting ways to measure and use performance as a way to give raises and incentives. Our CM contract is extremely plain and underwhelming - and I don’t mean its level of pay and compensation, but in the way we the city get to shape the tenure of a CM.
Broderick is right - we have NO real evaluation process for the CM, no history of such, and it’s not good for the city not to fix this. We have always flown by the seat of our pants with no real roadmap. Remember, Cox got good evaluations right up until the time he would have been fired - and as he was screwing up our budget, digging us into a hole by using our free cash, and sitting on audit letters from the DoR. We now have a city manager who is happy to have his performance evaluated on the merits.
We have a chance to debate and decide on such a process, to look at what other, very successful communities have been doing, and volunteers to help find that out. It’ll be good to take advantage of it. Let’s see if we do.
