Month: March 2022

Jude Prather and Shane Scott brought in three measures:
1. There need to be some sort of time constraints when an item runs too long.
2. Rules of decorum need an update
3. All city council members should show up in person, instead of zoom.

Some context: Everyone understands that these are targeting Max Baker. The recent debate over the lobbying ordinance is looming large in everyone’s mind. (And Max is the only one still zooming in from his home.)

The crux of the debate is this: Max gets into arguments from the dais. One side interprets him as being rude, repetitive, combative, and violating professional norms, like committing personal attacks. Moreover, they want to prevent him from doing this.

The other side says that these interpretations are fraught and subjective. Furthermore, the urge to shut Max down is part of a long tradition of how people in power stay in power. It perpetuates the status quo if you silence anyone who doesn’t fit right in to the existing power structure. (This is correct.)

Now first, every communication has two layers:
1. a surface layer – your tone, your word choice, your mannerisms
2. a deeper structure – the actual content you’re trying to communicate

These proposals are all attacking Max on the surface level, and trying to police his tone, word choice, and mannerisms. They are not taking issue with his ideas. This is a very old tactic – you focus on someone’s tone, and then you don’t have to engage with the content. Historically, requirements for the surface level (“professionalism”) were used to prevent anyone besides old white dudes from participating, unless they pandered to the old white dudes. Accusing someone of being unprofessional allows you plausible deniability – you weren’t against their ideas, but they were being so unprofessional!

Here is the utter hypocrisy: These three discussion items are themselves an example of a polished, professional surface layer – all Jude and Shane did was submit items for a policy discussion! Superficially, it looks like they are seeking a return to collegiality.

It’s the deeper structure that’s the problem. Targeting a single colleague like this is rude and counterproductive. If you have a problem with a colleague, you talk to them, and then try mediation or bring in a third party. You don’t blast a memo out to the company with ostensibly neutral rules that happen to apply very specifically to your nemesis.

Jude and Shane cloaked their attacks on Max by putting it into policy proposals. They want to crack down on overt rudeness, but then run wild with stealth rudeness embedded in these three proposals.

Finally: Trying to shut Max down is absolutely wrong. And it is also true that sometimes Max can be very frustrating. But other times, he’s the passionate champion of values I hold dear. People are complex.

Before I sum up the councilmembers, let me list some of my burning thoughts:

• Why do our council meetings last for 6+ hours? It’s not because Max is an intense speaker. What happens in bigger cities?
• It was implied several times – mostly by Max and Alyssa Garza – that off-camera, councilmembers say plenty of rude things, but then play nice for the camera. Certainly plausible, but it’s hard to interpret what’s going on, from the outside.
• You know what really wasted everyone’s time during the lobbying debate? The fact that Shane Scott managed to get everyone to postpone it for the umpteenth time. There are plenty of polite ways of wasting everyone’s time. Very professional.

Onto what was actually said:

Jude Prather: Kind of conciliatory, did not say much.

Shane Scott: Forgot he was even there.

Mayor Hughson: Fairly problematic in this conversation. She brings an absolute turd of a proposal, where she would ding anyone who personally attacks anyone else. If they persisted, and enough councilmembers agreed, they could be ejected and forfeit their vote on the issue. She tries to define personal attacks, and goes off the deep end with subjective language about viciousness, repetitiveness, and smirks.

She cannot stop interrupting Max Baker. He even requests that “No interruptions” be considered as an explicit rule of decorum, and she says, “No, I am not going to stop interrupting you when you say something factually wrong.” She may be correct that Max has said something factually wrong, but she’s shooting herself in the foot by interrupting him as often as she does.

Alyssa Garza: Consistently saves this council from itself. She explains about respectability politics and tone policing, and gets everyone on board with some cultural responsiveness training from a high quality consultant.

Mark Gleason: Mostly fine. He stands strongly opposed to any kind of time limit on discussions, and does want councilmembers to attend in person. He makes an earnest plea for the humanizing parts of being together in person, breaking bread together, etc.

Max Baker: Hard to summarize, since he was the subject of the entire conversation. He points out that anger and repetition are rhetorical techniques, and that they are trying to change how he delivers his words. He does correctly point out that we already have “calling the question”, which ends debate on an item and moves it onto a vote, and so time limits aren’t really needed.

He also tells Mark to fuck off (not in so many words) with his plea for humanity, and says to Mark, “The last time I saw you, you told me that I’m a fruitcake, and that I needed to skip off.” Max and Mark get snippy with each other over the things that were said in the course of campaigns. It got heated.

Saul Gonzalez: Silent per usual.

In the end:
– Everyone is on board with a Facilitated Retreat, run by someone who can offer cultural awareness and responsiveness mediation.
– the idea of time limits is discarded in favor of judicious use of calling the question.
– Max Baker and Jude Prather will get together and come up with a proposal to govern councilmembers zooming in to meetings and executive sessions.

This last hour was spent on how City Council evaluates its appointees.

First off, there are only four. This isn’t a broad discussion on city employees in general. They are the municipal judge, the city clerk, the city manager, and…one other that I’m forgetting. The important one here is the city manager.

Clearly there was friction between the former city manager, Bert Lumbreras, and city council. From the outside looking in, it’s kind of impossible to know what was going on. Was he being given monstrously large tasks, and insufficient staff or budget? Was he communicating this back and proactively helping to shape the tasks into things more do-able? Was he just ignoring requests that he didn’t like, and letting them fall by the wayside? The interim city manager, Stephanie Reyes, certainly seems smoother during the meetings, and less quick to tell the council why their idea is a nonstarter.

Anyway, performance evaluations are being altered to be outcomes-driven.

The debate hinged on one aspect of this: should the full staff-evaluation be included in the city council packet, easily visible for the entire city to see? Or should only a summary be included?

Max Baker was arguing that the entire evaluation should be in the packet. Since the entire evaluation is available under FOIA, he argued, let’s not paywall it. Let’s be transparent about why someone deserves a merit raise, so that constituents can see the basis for these decisions.

Mayor Hughson felt this was a terrible idea, for the employee’s sake. That it’s bad management for one employee to see another employee’s assessment. Mark Gleason’s concern was that it might shape how forthright councilmembers can be when they write their evaluation, if they know it will be going public.

I do think this is a tough call, and that both sides have merit. These are private citizens. There is a giant difference in visibility between putting a review behind a FOIA paywall and publishing it in the council packet.

I think I’m siding with Mayor Hughson and Mark Gleason. Extreme cases make bad policy. Egregious situations should be dealt with individually. (But if I’m reading between the lines, the other problem is that half the council phones it in and rubberstamps the evaluations, and so the evaluations don’t accurately reflect the things that were frustrating about the employee.)

However, the vote went the other way:
Shane Scott, Alyssa Garza, Max Baker, Saul Gonzalez – show the raw data of the whole evaluation
Jude Prather, Jane Hughson, Mark Gleason – Just the summary.