Not Joe Kirby (image: therenaissancepet.com)
It has been a long time since I have read such a preposterous and ridiculous letter to the editor. If it weren’t for the obvious status of the author, you would think it was satire. Mr. Kirby suggests our city council works ‘too’ much. The highlight of his column is this remark;
I would like to see them resist the urge to do more, to become more involved in the details of the administration of city government.
What Mr. Kirby is really saying is, stop nosing around in a government us rich folk have been running just fine for years through the executive branch.
I would in fact urge the exact opposite, I would ask the executive branch (the mayor) to stop nosing around in the legislative branch (council) and let them legislate policy while the mayor runs the day to day operations of the city. That has NOT been the case.
Even Mr. Kirby’s good intentioned arguments are laughable at best;
The city council job was thoughtfully designed in the 1990s to be a part-time legislative position, requiring 10 to 15 hours a week.
Basically after their myriad of council meetings on Tuesday, that leaves the city council around 1.5 hours a day to do their job. That’s reviewing contracts and agenda items, taking tours of city facilities, attending luncheon meetings, talking to the media and most importantly shaping policy and RESPONDING TO CONSTITUENTS.
The city charter of home rule was implemented in 1994, (passing by a mere 125 votes – hardly a mandate) at that time the city population was around 110K. Today it is 180K. A population growth of 70K people! To apply the same ‘time’ standards to the job today as when the charter was implemented isn’t even a reasonable argument.
Basically what Mr. Kirby is asking the council to do is NOTHING or very little. And he isn’t even asking, he’s essentially begging them to get less involved. He wants the executive branch (one person) not only do their job as operations manager of the city, but to write policy and negotiate the ‘big deals’ while the council just shows up for a few hours a week to blindly rubber stamp the mayor’s agenda. Can’t we just get a group of volunteers to just do that instead of paying them? And the heck with meetings, why can’t we just do it by mail?
Mr. Kirby’s letter wreaked of elitism and is disgusting proof just who runs city hall. Not the people. But those waves of change may be coming and it scares the living sh*t out of Mr. Kirby and his ilk. So scared he took 15 minutes out of his California beach time to pen this letter.