Easy: Staff doesn’t want to bother and the Council wants to hide behind “staff are the professionals.”
Capisce?

EDITOR’S NOTE: Staff members are SUPPOSED to be “professionals” re management of municipal government, although that seems to mean little more than that they get paid a load of taxpayer money while requiring constant micro-managing/babysitting by a mayor paid less for the entire year than the City Manager makes in one month, and by aldermen who are paid only one-tenth of what the mayor makes.

When biz as usual involves no accountability (and in this we must include what Eisenhower accurately called the military-industrial complex as well as our local vendors and public employees), what do you expect? When there are no measurable, actionable, etc. standards for anything, how can you tell until the last bill is paid and the warranty has lapsed whether you got what you paid for? You cannot manage by exception, as the top consultants advise, if you don’t have a set of standards by which to identify deviations/exceptions. Good luck. Micromanaging is the only way because if people get annoyed enough they might do their jobs.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Exactly. But we also would note that you can sometimes predict bad results simply because an idea or project is a bad based on policy or principle – like the City’s multi-million dollar “investment” in the Uptown TIF that provided a major financial subsidy to the private developers when (a) the area wasn’t truly TIF-qualified, and (b) the City “socialized” the debt and expenses while “privatizing” the profits to PRC.

Over the years I have talked to a number of elected officials on all four of our local government bodies and the consistent theme I heard from virtually every one is that they need to “support staff.” And they said it in a way like it should not even be questioned, and could not really answer me when I asked “Why?”

Gayle Mountcastle rarely seems to get any pushback from her board (at least not by what I read in the paper or in the park board minutes), and the superintendents at both school districts barely get a peep of challenge out of their boards. The city council never used to challenge Schuenke, although they did better near the end with Hock. Hamilton does not seem to be getting much pushback, but I cannot tell whether that is because he is doing an acceptable job or the council is letting him slide.

EDITOR’S NOTE: We have made the same observations. For the 8 years this editor was on the Park District Board (1997-2005), the executive director of the Illinois Association of Park Districts (“IAPD”), Ted Flickinger, regularly published letters titled “Are You On Board” which brazenly directed board members that their job is to deal only with “policy” while leaving ALL management to the executive director (such as Mountcastle) while ALWAYS supporting staff. And because most of the Board members were Kool-Aid drinkers, that’s pretty much the tack they took.

We suspect the same thing occurs with those other public bodies, the only question is whether the Kool-Aid drinkers on each body comprise a majority.

Mazz should get a pat on the back, he is the hardest working person up there and it is appreciated. Every time I have attended a OAC meeting or PZ meeting he is there. No others to be in sight. He is not my rep but I wish he was.

EDITOR’S NOTE: “Don’t mistake activity for achievement.” John Wooden.

That being said, we’ve had – and still have – aldermen who provided neither. And it does appear that Ald. Mazzuca is definitely NOT phoning it in.

I can’t believe you are giving kudos to an alderman for doing his job. He isn’t performing above and beyond what is expected. Big deal, he is doing the job he was elected to do.

EDITOR’S NOTE: If Mazzuca is merely “doing his job,” then certain staff members would appear not to be doing theirs – because the guy making $1,200 a year shouldn’t be doing the jobs of the $100,000/year folks.

Sometimes it seems his questions of staff would have been better asked prior to the COW or Council meeting instead of at the meeting so he could formulate a more succinct presentation of his concerns. Since he does seem to have some good thoughts it would be a shame for them to be lost because he takes too long to get to the point.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Perhaps his “presentation” could be more “succinct,” but when the questions he poses – which generally seem pretty reasonable to us – can’t be readily answered by staff, we think that deserves public airing. And the shortcomings seem to be are more staff’s than his.

The commenter from 9:43 p.m. raises a point I’ve pondered many times. It seems like the staff of the city, schools or park district work to prepare for a meeting and our elected reps show up to hear about their work for the first time, and the staff hear these concerns in real-time at the meeting, too. The best case scenario is that nothing gets done; the worst case scenario is that votes are taken without a full vetting of the facts and the options. NOW if indeed there is some communication ahead of time, great, but it’s not resulting in better governance. Dear Editor, any insight on this?

EDITOR’S NOTE: Yes and no.

Every alderman and board member gets their packet a couple of days or more before the meeting. But since those folks have REAL jobs with REAL responsibilities and REAL accountability to REAL employers with REAL firing power who expect REAL productivity to service REAL customers who expect REAL service, the ability of those elected officials to ascertain and address half-baked bureaucratic work product enough in advance of the meeting to give the bureaucrats time to fully-bake their product is often limited.

Hence, first-time questioning at meetings, often followed by blanks stares or tap-dancing by the $100K-plus bureaucrats and the “we’ll have to get back to you on that” alibi.

The guy making $1200 a year should not be doing the job of the $100,000 per year.

Someone besides the elected officials better start doing their job.

EDITOR’S NOTE: But it’s up to th0se guys making $1200 a year to make sure the guys and gals making $100K a year earn their keep. Letting the last $200K guy hang on for four years reflects poorly on the $1200 guys.

PD:

Your point seems to be our elected officials do not have time to review information (good info or bad info) provided by staff prior to a meeting.

Sorry, but as you have so often stated, if they cannot or do not want to do the job get out of the way and give someone else a chance. They knew what the job required when they ran. Reviewing information prior to a meeting is one of those requirements.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Anon:

No, our point is that the information our elected officials receive 3-4 days (2 of which are, for the City Council, weekend days) before a meeting is often so voluminous, shoddy, incomplete and/or outright misleading that it is unreasonable for even diligent elected part-time officials to be as prepared as we would otherwise expect them to be.

Example: while the City’s Council meeting “packet” is posted on the City’s website in the form of individual pdfs corresponding to (and identified by) each topic/issue on the agenda, D-64 posts its 185-page “packets” as one pdf, thereby requiring the reader to painstakingly scroll through most/all of the packet to find what he’s looking for (Thank you, D-64 Minister of Opacity and Propaganda Bernadette Tramm!)