And the Beatings Will Continue
Is there an elected body anywhere that doesn't waste an enormous amount of time beating around the bush trying NOT to say out loud what everyone else and by everyone else, I mean the general PUBLIC, already knows?
Take the Lake Worth City Manager selection "process" for example. Is it not painfully obvious that two Commissioners are still licking their wounds after their unsuccessful opposition to the termination of the last City Manager? Is it not agonizingly apparent, that having been dragged into having to choose a new improved City Manager, they continue to lament the fact that the Commission voted to engage this process without incurring the $25,000 expense of a headhunter? And it is some kind of state secret that those two Commissioners are more hell bent on NOT including one of the candidates in the final selection process than they are on hiring anybody to fill the position?
Do they think NO ONE understands the secret code? That "city manager experience" means someone who doesn't know where the bodies and the money are buried in our very own City Hall? That "city manager experience" means a candidate that they can mold into a new version of the old City Manager?
Allegations of Sunshine violations, back-room deals and vast conspiracies to pervert the ever-mother-lovin "process" pale in comparison to how this actual "process" has unfolded in front of God and everybody. If only the choice of a new and improved City Manager was the only dead horse beaten into the ground beneath the beaten bushes.
Take the Community Relations and the Planning and Zoning Advisory boards - Please!
How are some of our Electeds blithely unaware of what everyone else seems to know? These boards are populated with too many unqualified people who gained their seats in recognition and gratitude for campaign support or in support of synergistic personal agendas absolutely unrelated and sometimes, in direct opposition to the goals and objectives of the boards.
Using the excuse that the boards need members who may be professionally unqualified simply to include a diverse public point of view would be laughable if it weren't so tragically irrelevant. Since when does all this regard for the public extend to making sure the boards get the public information they ask for. In this case, the Finance Advisory Board comes readily to mind. And since when do Board recommendations to the Commission ever see the light of day anyway, much less what the public thinks.
Shall we talk a little about the Sister City Board that can't meet for lack of an ethics certified quorum, the sunsetted Re-Branding and Marketing Task Force whose excellent recommendations were summarily dismissed without action, the long departed Climate Control Board whose recommendations were ignored until the same recommendations were made by a $200,000 consultant study and then ignored, or the Firefighters' Retirement Board currently being sued by the City for not violating State Law.
I'd rather hear about the Recreation Board and the Tree Board and all that they've accomplished. And couldn't we all have a very extended and pleasant conversation on what the CRA has done. But NO. We are invited to sit through another session of not talking about what everyone's talking about.
Thursday, March 8th, 6:00 PM, City Hall
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