The Cheese Stands Alone
When you were a kid, did you ever play with somebody who didn’t follow the directions on the side of the box? Some kid who made up the rules so they could win? The one who invented words for Scrabble or wouldn’t be out when they were tagged?
What’s it like to play with someone who doesn’t think the rules apply to them, that other people are always the problem; that they’re always right and others are always wrong? They say sorry when they have to, but don’t mean it.
Good players on the playground of life learn to cooperate and collaborate so the play is fun for everybody and can be sustained for a long time.
Some of my best memories of being a kid were the extended stories me and my best friend, Karen and her brothers Will and Fred would act out over the weeks of summer vacation in the weedy back lots of our houses. We played an awful lot of ‘war’ with our Barbies and GI Joes thanks to growing up watching the war in Vietnam on TV’s nightly news. And when we took a break from that game, we’d play Sorry or Clue or Operation or Twister with the rules on the box that we all agreed to.
The rules are the thing that help people playing a game know how to work together, even while competing to win. When everybody plays by the same rules, it’s fun. You can be creative inside the game and if you come to a consensus with the other players, you can change the rules.
City government is a lot like a board game. You can be creative inside the game, when you learn how (and agree to) play by the rules.
I watched the Special Session of the Budget Committee and want to encourage people to watch it.
The Mayor of Manzanita has written a couple of op/eds. There are rules about writing public statements as an elected official in the City’s Rules of Procedure. You may only state the official position of the city, as approved by a majority of the Council or if it’s your personal opinion, you have to make that clear before stating it. Oh, and it helps not to include your elected position title in your by-line, as in the Mayor of Manzanita.
The first op/ed the Mayor wrote is a response to an article I wrote about the City Manager’s review information that was available to the public on the City’s website. That was never a violation of executive session rules because it was public.
In her Tillamook County Pioneer, May 16, 2023 op/ed, Response: Transparency and Compensation, the Mayor wrote, “…the recent evaluation of the City Manager was made public. In that light, the process should also be public.” She then goes on to write in detail about the performance review.
Hold up. The executive session rules aren’t suggestions, and those present at a closed meeting don’t get to choose which information is protected or when it “should” be released.
If that were true, I would’ve saved myself the stress of the last few months and just spilled the beans on the two executive sessions I attended. The place for a discussion of the process of review would be at a Council workshop.
The Mayor’s most recent op/ed is about the reasons for her lone no vote to pass the ’23/24 Budget.
Voting no isn’t the deal. It’s the pattern of behavior that’s bad news.
During three budget workshops the Mayor didn’t raise questions, didn’t ask for information she wanted or comment to voice her opinions. She didn’t talk with other colleagues on council or members of the Budget Committee and she didn’t ask staff to get her the information she wanted.
Maybe she called Waldport or Toledo.
Information is available to council and the mayor. If they have questions, there are other members of council to talk with about process. There’s the City Manager.
We have operators standing by, but you’ve got to pick up the phone…and not dial long distance.
It’s not that there can’t be outside sources and advisors. There can and should be. New ideas and solutions come from cross-pollination. But it shouldn’t be mutually exclusive.
Instead of talking with other councilors or staff, here’s what the mayor did do; she wrote a memo to Council and the Budget Committee and then published an op/ed. As the Mayor of Manzanita.
A few minutes into the Budget Committee’s special meeting it was clear that the Mayor was concerned. Except that none of her concerns really had to do with the budget for ’23/24, they had to do with policy, which is Council’s deal not the Budget Committee’s.
She commented a couple of times that the Budget Committee should “push” Council, like they’re adversaries and not colleagues working toward the benefit of the city as a whole.
Council and members of the Budget Committee said that some of her ideas were worth pursuing but she clearly had no idea how the process of implementing policy works…like you have to talk with your colleagues and sometimes actually meet up with them. We need new ideas and solutions for old problems but you have to work within the rules to accomplish them. Otherwise nothing will get done no matter how good your ideas are.
In the statement the Council President made at the end of the meeting, she said that the Mayor hadn’t met or talked with any of the councilors, unless she had to in required meetings. For months.
Equally troubling is that when the Mayor and Council President last had an agreed upon meeting to hear a presentation by the Mayor’s husband, the Mayor wasn’t there. Only her husband and one of her advisors were.
The Mayor’s husband and the advisor weren’t elected to office. The Mayor’s husband and advisor can’t implement policy with council. The Mayor can do that, if she works with members of council but apparently she doesn’t and hasn’t for the months she’s been in office.
The Mayor acknowledged that it has been a “bumpy start.” She said that the way things are now isn’t good for the city, the council or her and that she’s been saying so since February. Then why didn’t she respond to offers to meet and talk? Why didn’t she pick up the phone? February was five months ago.
The rest of council play well together. I know all four of them. They don’t always agree about everything but they work together. They talk. The mayor says she wants to be a “fixer of problems,” but six months into her term she’s isolated herself from the only people who can help her do that.
Remember that game, the Farmer in the Dell? At the end, it’s the cheese standing alone.
In my last op/ed for the Pioneer I wrote that ‘all will be revealed’. That wasn’t a threat or some political strategy, just a true fact. It’s been my experience that whenever you try to hide something, you are always revealed. What you won’t own, will own you instead. Whatever your secret is, it’s coming for you.
Instant karma, John Lennon called it. I love that guy.
Kim Rosenberg loretta.kim.rosenberg@gmail.com
Link to Friday June 2, 2023 Manzanita Budget Committee Meeting
https://youtu.be/R3WAO8vKQhI