My dad used to say, if ya want to find out what's going on in town; "go getcher haircut".
Well, it's been damn-near two whole months since I posted anything - Partly me and some long trips, and partly some trouble with blogspot, (that's pretty-much all fixed now...hopefully).
I was really glad to hear about Phil Barlow winning his election a couple of weeks back. I've always enjoyed spendin' time gabbing with Phil in the old Waynes parking lot, he'll be a great asset in City Council. And I hear tell that Phil is quite upset about some kind of a push to finish up with "some items" on the "agenda" before the new Council-elect takes over in January.
This is to say that the St. Helens City Council is working against the clock to push through a City Charter change. Some in town say that the real purpose of a charter change is to upgrade the City Administrator position to City Manager.
ok...The first thing I heard that struck me was the fact that they are citing the ridiculous City Satisfaction Survey from a year past as their reason for the change. If it's the same Satisfaction Survey that I recall, there was nothing in it from John Q. Public screaming for upgrading any city positions at all. Actually, as I remember, most people seemed to think that the city was not very responsive to the public need and were very unhappy with BOTH the City Administrator and the City Planner. The citizens surveyed didn't want them to have more power...rather, they wanted them both fired. On top of all this: Council never published the satisfaction survey results publically, which were in fact, quite harsh and damning.
So what we seem to have is an outgoing council, hell-bent on changing the City Charter, whose decisions seem to be counter to the will of the people...but then again, THAT'S really nothing new, is it?
So the scuttlebutt I hear is that the outgoing regime has hand-picked a "committee of friends" to put together this new "Charter", and they need to get this done ASAP, before Phil and the new council comes in.
A Charter Change Election would not be until 2008, but a new charter can be presented to the public - along with what ever spin they would like to include - and unless there is any publicity to the contrary, a few people think it'll probably pass.
Keep your eyes on things here! It's a nice li'l town y'all have. Good to be back for a day or two.
-Tom
2 comments:
are you sure about this? how do you find out? sounds like typical sour grapes gossip to me
Not gossip at all. It is the way that the City does business... not just our city, but lots of small towns. The city is in a rush to get things done before the next council takes over.
They orginally had a "satisfaction survey." The end result was that people were very dissatisfied with the way business was conducted by the city, and particularly with the City Manager and City Planner.
The Council result is that they plan to elevate these postions, and give them more authority. In order to to do this, they must first change the charter. They have hand selected a "special Charter Committee" made up of friends...
Hard to call something sour grapes gossip, it is more like business as usual for my city.
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