Weekly Managers Report July 9, 2004

[GoldShield]

TO: The Honorable Mayor and Town Council Members
FROM: Bonnie L. Therrien, Town Manager
DATE: July 9, 2004

A. COUNCIL COMMUNICATIONS:
1. Manager: I will be away from Town from Friday afternoon until Wednesday mid-morning. The Chief will be in charge while I am away. He and Gale will have phone numbers if they need to reach me. Please remember to e-mail or call me with any questions or concerns you have with the Blasting Ordinance as soon as possible so the Public Safety Committee will have these before they meet.

2. Upcoming Events:
There will be a meeting with the residents surrounding the Football Field on Thursday, July 15th, at 6:30 pm in Council Chambers. This meeting will allow them time to ask questions and voice any concerns. If you plan on attending, please let Gale know by Tuesday so if a majority of Council is going to attend, I can post an agenda.
* The Chamber of Commerce will be having a Business After Hours at The Spicy Green Deli on Wednesday, July 14th from 5:30 – 7:30 pm. Please call Jeanne at 513-4024, X215 if you are going to attend.
* The Referendum on the Bond will be held on Wednesday, July 21, 2004 at the Pitkin Community Center from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m.
* The Employee Luncheon, honoring our employees, will be held Thursday, July 22nd, at noon at the Community Center. Please join us.

3. Council Committee Dates:
* Town Council and Budget and Finance and Infrastructure Committees – Wednesday, July 14th, 6:30 pm, Council Chambers
* Shared Services – Monday, July 19th, 5:30 pm

4. Department/Division News:
* Library – Circulation reached a new record on Tuesday, July 6th with a total of 2,895 loans, breaking the previous record of 2,446 set on July 21st.
* Police – I have included the June 2004 Monthly Report for your information.
* Economic Development – We will be e-mailing WFSB potential parcels that could assist them in their search for a new home. I will keep you posted on this.

5. Board/Commission News:
6. Council Questions/Answers:
* I have attached the minutes from the Board of Education’s February 10th minutes outlining their discussion on the lights for Cottone Field. You will note that they only approved the concept, so you may want to refer the exact plans to the Board once you have reviewed them at your July 19th meeting.
* The Superintendent has given me information on their Energy Management Program. If you wish to see the information, please feel free to borrow the material. At present, this company only deals with schools.

7. CRCOG: Nothing this week
CCM: Nothing this week
COST: Nothing this week
ICMA: I have enclosed two articles from PM Magazine, which is produced by the International City and County Managers’ Association. One is entitled “Toxic Relationships – Can the Climate of Local Government Discussion Be Improved?”, and “A Tale of Cool Cities”.

8. Miscellaneous:
* Attached is a letter I received from Northeast Utilities which includes the completed Conservation List of properties that NU will be disposing of in the future. Wethersfield has one parcel on the list.
* Following is the update on Blighted Properties which have been cited for correction: 21 Marmor Court – Complete; 36 State Street – Being repaired and owner will be applying for a Small Cities Grant; 91 Nott Street – Demolition permit taken out; 255 Wells Road – Being demolished; 299 Middletown Road – given until November to complete work.
* I have attached a letter to the Mayor from Senator Lieberman concerning CDBG funds.
* We have been having problems with electricity and the bands we have been hosting at the Cove for our summer concert series. It appears that the electrical requirements for some of the bands we have on our schedule this year, are higher then what we have at the Cove presently. We have not had problems with this in the past. We are working on increasing the power and Kathy Bagley will be making sure we know the bands’ electrical requirements before they perform. There was a delay in the week’s concert until we could get more service.

B. PROJECT UPDATES:
* Attached is the CIP Monthly Report – Project Status prepared by Director of Public Works Mike Turner.
*Cottone Field – The drainage is being installed this week. They will be working over the weekend. Some residents are complaining about the noise. The contractors are currently within our Noise Ordinance. We did not receive a US Soccer Grant for this project. The letter is attached.
* Attached is an update on all drainage projects which Council has approved.
* Physical Services – The Board of Education’s Physical Services Department has moved into the Town’s facility.
* Blasting – Nott Street – I have attached a copy of the insurance certificate for the blasting company which the State Fire Marshal has on hand. Because of the low cloud cover on Thursday, more residents did feel the air vibrations from the blast. I have not received any reports of damage to resident’s property.

C. CALENDAR REMINDERS:
* The School Building Committee will be meeting on Monday, July 12th, at 6 pm in the Town Manager’s Conference Room.

D. ATTACHMENTS:
* Police Monthly Report
* BOE Minutes
* Magazine Articles
* Northeast Utilities Letter
* Sen. Lieberman Letter
* CIP Monthly Status Report
* US Soccer Foundation Letter
* Drainage Projects Status Report
* School Projects Building Committee Meeting Notice/Agenda
* Insurance Certificate

[GoldShield]

PM (Public Management) Magazine: icma.org/pm/8606/index.htm
July 2004 Volume 86 Number 6

Toxic Relationships: Can the Climate of Local Government Discussion Be Improved?
by Emily Harrison

Over the past several years in the San Francisco Bay area, a number of local governments have been the focus of headlines portraying community dissatisfaction, accusations of ethics violations, and open hostility between councilmembers. A staff person finds it easy to become discouraged by the negativity surrounding work in public service.
To gain some perspective, this author decided to seek the wisdom of those who had served as Palo Alto's mayors over the past 20 years. The current climate of mistrust and negativity clearly had pained these former leaders. All had spent time thoughtfully diagnosing where the problems had originated and what could be done to mitigate them. I was struck by the remarkable similarity in their conclusions, which may be of assistance to others who are currently in or contemplating the role of manager or community leader.

Loss of the Moderate Voices
A number of the former mayors lamented the loss of the moderate voices in public debate. There is nothing new in pointing out that small groups of politically sophisticated players can have a disproportionate influence on decisions in local government. Showing up in force at a council meeting can have an impact, and a minority position can appear to elected leaders to be in the majority.

Debate, however, has increasingly been limited to those with polarized opinions because a large part of the community young families does not participate. Palo Alto's excellent schools have attracted many new young families, and its expensive housing stock means that both parents often work; when they aren't working, they are deeply involved in school and other child-centered activities. These parents have little time or patience for local issues... They have chosen not to participate in day-to-day community controversies unless these directly affect their well-being.

The expanded use of e-mail for constituent communications has also had a powerful influence on the political environment. One mayor said that, in the past, the average citizen rarely took the trouble to pen a letter, the irritation that may have spawned it rarely being worth the effort to do so. E-mail makes it possible to communicate at any hour of the day or night and in any tone the writer finds appropriate, given the mood of the moment. The tenor of many of the e-mails received by Palo Alto's council is hostile, angry, and occasionally abusive, the filter” of formal communication and its attendant protocols being lifted.

Quality of Life and Win-Lose Politics
One former mayor posited that the more people pay to become part of a community through their purchase of a home, the more passionate they will be to ensure that their investment retains or grows in value. This value is more than resale price: it involves the spirit and nature of a community...

The expanded use of e-mail for constituent
...The concern to protect the community's quality of life has become emotionally charged, framed as a win-lose struggle, a zero-sum game, as opposed to an opportunity for negotiation and compromise. Here are two salient reasons:

Elected leaders who lack the skills to mediate difficult issues. New councilmembers, by and large, bring less experience to the job than in previous years. In California, as in the rest of the nation, experience in government does not have the value for voters that it once did.

In prior years, councilmembers rose through the ranks by serving on city boards and commissions or as leaders of neighborhood associations before running for council. In this way, the public was given a chance to see how the person behaved as one of a group of equals a good way to predict his or her success in the collegial environment of a council. Skills of negotiation, compromise, and consensus building could be developed. Today, single-issue and celebrity politics discount the value of this apprenticeship process.

...New members used to be able to watch their colleagues for the first two or three years of their council terms and learn council customs, how to preside over a meeting, and how parliamentary procedures operate.... New councilmembers serving limited terms are eager to make their mark immediately and are less willing to defer to seniority.

Media Spotlight on Contention
The media play a much more prominent role in local government today than in the past. Three newspapers cover Palo Alto. All of the mayors cited the negative influence of the media on the civility of political discourse in the past several years, contending that the local press both generates and feeds dissension among leaders and the community. One mayor lamented the gotcha! school of journalism.

When relationships are strained, the former mayors all complained, the Brown Act's restrictions make it difficult for members of the council to try to iron out problems as a team. Members are hesitant to take the risks in communication required to truly address issues when the press and members of the community, not to mention staff, are all present. One mayor lamented the inability to spend time understanding how his colleagues approached problems because open meeting laws (and the media) view this use of time as part of the deliberative process rather than, as it should be, to his mind, part of learning to work together in the first place.

Can the Negativity Be Reversed?
All of us can take responsibility for making a positive change in the environment in which we interact daily, as elected leaders, as staff, and as citizens. While easy answers are dangerous, hope exists that there can be a return to greater and more positive participation by citizens in their local governments.

It is unlikely, at least in the short term, that term limits or the restrictions imposed by open-meeting laws will be altered. In much the same way that issues are cyclical and can be put in perspective, however, one can hope that the current disengagement by a major part of the community in the affairs of local government is also cyclical. In Palo Alto, the young families who are now consumed with school and child-centered activities will mature, and parents will have more leisure in the future to devote to community affairs. It has happened in the past and is a natural cycle. Leadership in the PTA is a natural training ground for other community leadership roles.

All of the mayors I interviewed stressed that leaders both elected and appointed have a difficult responsibility in these times of contention. They must retain a positive vision of a community and its future. Leaders must develop their abilities to forge consensus. It is incumbent on political leaders to use their judgment and to make decisions that are truly right, rather than politically expedient.

Rather than following the perceived will of a majority that may, in fact, only be a well-organized and loud minority, when alternatives for compromise are unavailable, a leader must make tough choices. Neither elected nor community leaders should personalize issues; both groups must be role models of disinterested engagement. The debate must be dynamic, but once a vote has been taken, leaders must learn to move on. And leaders must be willing to stay to the end, to win or lose a vote, and then to move on and keep working.

Humorist Garrison Keillor regrets the fascination that Americans seem to have for quick solutions to difficult problems. In a Time magazine essay entitled, Hey, Arnold! This is Serious Stuff. Keillor concludes his lecture in this way:

You go for a walk on a summer night and notice the little ramps carved into curbs at street corners. People sat through a lot of meetings to get that accomplished. It was a boon to the wheelchair crowd and also to parents pushing strollers and kids riding bikes. It made life slightly more civil and friendly. Government works through small, incremental changes, and action heroes are much too high and mighty to take notice of these or other small details, but the changes are real, and in the end we prefer government to heroism.

My 5-year-old daughter can look forward to opportunities larger than those her grandmothers enjoyed, in a world in which men and women move freely as equals. No hero strode upon the scene and brought that about; it happened through politics… You will never hear about it on Fox, but that's the truth, baby.

Emily Harrison is assistant city manager, Palo Alto, California ([e-mail])

© 2004 International City/County Management Association: icma.org/pm/8606/index.htm

(Per the limitations of this venue, I had to minimally cut the document to "fit"; you can always go online to read the whole thing.)