Taking care on motions

Something that drove me crazy with the last council seems to be creeping into this one.

For the most part, the actions of the City Council are expressed in the resolutions and ordinances they pass.  These are usually presented to them in the form of documents submitted by the city staff and are summarized as agenda items.  Typically a council member will say something like "I move approval of item PH-X", and the council will signify its pleasure.

To make my concern concrete, consider a request to rezone the lot at the corner of Stillforest Drive and Business 190 to B-5.  This request will be reviewed by the city staff and the Planning and Zoning Commission, and their recommendation (or recommendations) will be presented to the City Council for approval.  This might be a controversial request.  It might be in conflict with surrounding land use.  Let's say for argument that city staff recommends B-1 zoning and that P&Z supports the staff recommendation.

The agenda item (call it PH-X) before the Council will probably reflect the original request: B-5 zoning.  Staff will brief the council on their recommendation that B-1 zoning be granted.  Some council member will say "I move approval of PH-X"; and everyone will vote in favor.

What are they approving?  The item as written and read, which grants B-5 zoning and allows a hide-tanning factory in the mayor's back yard?  Or the staff recommendation?  Or something else that might have been discussed during the briefing?

Motions before the City Council must be concise.  I don't think we yet have agreed-upon language that allows council members to be precise about what they are moving, and that worries me.

Indifference

The most incisive comment on politics to-day is indifference. When men
and women begin to feel that elections and legislatures do not matter
very much, that politics is a rather distant and unimportant exercise,
the reformer might as well put to himself a few searching doubts.
Indifference is a criticism that cuts beneath oppositions and wranglings
by calling the political method itself into question. Leaders in public
affairs recognize this. They know that no attack is so disastrous as
silence, that no invective is so blasting as the wise and indulgent smile
of the people who do not care.

I didn't say that.  Walter Lippmann did, in 1914. 

So who read that city manager contract?

In my last post I spent several paragraphs praising the employment contract that makes Glenn Morrison city manager of Killeen. In this post, I'll analyze the city council's actions with regard to that contract.


Employment contracts are usually written in a jargon particular to that kind of agreement.  Words are not always used in their usual sense; precedent often determines how terms are phrased.  People untrained in employment law are unlikely to fully understand a well-written employment contract.  Given that, it's interesting to speculate "who read that contract?"


Jonathan Okray certainly did, and he had several questions about it.  We can assume that Terry Clark, Elizabeth Blackstone and Jared Foster, if they did not read the whole thing, at least understood it based on their participation on the contract negotiation team.  I'm willing to concede that Mayor Corbin read it: if he didn't understand it he has staff in his law firm to explain it to him.  But where does that leave us with council members Gilmore, Lower and Segarra?  As far as I can, none of them has special knowledge in this area, yet none had substantive questions about the contract.

Good City Manager Contract

The contract to hire Glenn Morrison as City Manager was well done.  Terry Clark, Elizabeth Blackstone, Jared Foster (council members), Katherine Davis (city attorney) and Debbie Maynor (director of Human Resources) negotiated what seems to me a contract that is fair on both sides.

The City Manager's compensation package (exclusive of benefits common to all city employees) is $186,000.  That may seem high to you, but it's well within the normal range of executive compensation for managers of a city of this size.

The best things the committee did fall outside direct compensation:

1.  They negotiated a fair severance package.  Glenn will get six months' base pay if terminated without cause.
2. They carefully specified the ways in which the employment contract can be terminated.  Again, it's fair and common-sense, but it's something an earlier council  did not make clear in the last city manager's contract.
3. They based the contract on agreements already in place in other large Texas cities.
4. They sought outside advice in the form of community input and independent legal council.  Both of these should make citizens confident in the integrity of the result.

I think Glenn Morrison is a good administrator and has the capacity to be an even better one.  Congratulations to Morrison and the committee that negotiated the contract.  To the council that approved the contract, maybe not so much.  That's the subject of the next blog post.

Blogging? What's that?

My wife and I will be chilling with my son and his wife and her family this weekend.   I might think about blogging, but I won't do it.

Look for me Monday night or so.

Temporary signs: "Sale This Weekend"

Among the local business people who spoke at last night's City Council Workshop on the subject of the   proposed revisions to the Sign Ordinance were two who insisted that temporary signs are vital to their businesses and that the temporary sign provisions proposed are insufficient.  I'll write about both of them.

The first comment was from the owner of a gift shop on S. Fort Hood Street.  He said that signs announcing "Sale" drove a large part of his business (especially on Federal holidays) and that when he could not longer put up such signs, his sales fell 40%.  This is worthy of consideration.

There are a number things to look at:

• Do we care about temporary signs?  If so, why?
• Was the reported drop in sales caused by the removal of temporary signs, or were there other possible causes?
• Is there something about Killeen shoppers that make them especially responsive to such signs when buyers in Harker Heights, Salado, Georgetown, Leander, Cedar Park and other local communities don't seem to require as many of them?
• In what way are the proposed temporary-sign provisions insufficient for this man's purposes?
• Are there cost-effective ways for this business owner to draw attention to his sale events that don't involve frequent resort to temporary signs?
• Is there any observable impact to city revenue?  In other words, did the drop in this store's business cause a decrease in city sales tax returns, or did people just take their custom to other Killeen businesses?
• What did the Planning and Zoning Commission say when this testimony was presented to them? Did they follow a consistent methodology in evaluating this testimony?

Obviously this is not an exhaustive list.  The complaint should be looked into on these and no doubt other grounds.  A problem is that the city council is not organized in a way that makes these kinds of inquiries easy.  Perhaps the council can return the issue to Planning and Zoning with a request to resolve the questions.

Workshop not great entertainment

I'm afraid I oversold it.

There was a single bright spot in the 4-hour City Council workshop tonight:  Many (maybe most) of the opinions about the proposed revision to the Sign Ordinance were brought  up.  All the citizens who testified did a good job; so did the staff.  I think we now know what areas need further study and documentation.

Unfortunately, the City Council sleep-walked through it.  Come on, guys.  You weren't elected to sit up there and mumble platitudes about being flexible.  The obvious answer about what to next was "break up the problem into decidable issues and dig into them."  I won't pre-suppose an outcome.  There may be room for a "Sale this weekend" exception to the temporary sign provision.  There may be a good reason to build signs so high they can be seen from any place in town.  But just "being flexible" is what got this city the reputation of being ugly in the first place and is another way of saying "we don't want to make a decision."

Don't pay too much for those tickets

The agenda for tomorrow's City Council Workshop is jam-packed.  In fact, I would not be surprised if the meeting were still going strong (or at least still going) at 2100.

Here's the top-level agenda:


DS-1 Discuss City Council Agenda Items and Land Use Cases

There isn't much that looks controversial, but there are 11 consent agenda items, 7 public hearings and an ordinance proposal.  That will take a good hour to get through even if there aren't questions (and I hope we never get in a situation where there aren't any questions).

DS-2 Discuss Sign Ordinance and Proposed Amendments

Depending on who shows up and how much public input the mayor decides to permit, this could go on for a long time.  There is a lot of strong feeling about this ordinance (I'll probably be inclined to chime in myself) and we might as well get it all out on the table.

DS-3 Aviation Update

This should take only 10 minutes.  It will take longer.

DS-4 Briefing on University and Cemetery Overlay District and Revised Amendments

This is a subject that the new council needs to understand in detail.  I haven't seen the slides, but if they follow the tradition of other City Planning presentations, they will be extensive and detailed.  Everyone should listen anyway.

DS-5 Discuss City Council Meeting and Workshop Content, Start Times, Timelines and Format

I hope this will be just an introduction to the subject.  The current council doesn't have the background or experience to make good long-term decisions about these matters yet.  If the item is intended to introduce and entertain ideas for future discussion, it will be worthwhile.  Anything beyond that is rushing things.

DS-6 Receive a Briefing from the City Manager Negotiating Committee on the status of negotiations,
and discuss timeline for completing the hiring process.

I hope this can be discussed before some of the other agenda items.  If it goes last, it will probably miss the KDH deadline and be held before a largely-empty room.  The mayor is considering allowing citizen comments, but it it doesn't happen until 2100, that's an empty gesture.

Get tickets for Tuesday's Council Workshop

If you thought last Tuesday's discussion of zoning item PH-7 was fun (and it was, even as it brought out serious issues) then the workshop at 1700 on June 19 should entertain you even more.

This weekend, Mayor Corbin posted this on Facebook (reposted here with his permission):

The negotiating committee [for a contract to hire Glenn Morrison as City Manager] will give the council an update at the workshop on Tuesday evening. I expect a group of malcontents will be there urging us to rescind our previous decision; they should know those comments would be out of order but I know it will happen. Even though it would be out of order, I will probably ask the Council to let some of them address the Council.

Personally, I think Glenn Morrison will make a competent city manager.  He has the skills and is interested in doing the job.  For the most part, the city staff likes him and can work with him.  As citizens, we've had 15 months' experience with Morrison as City Manager in all but name.  Unfortunately, six of those currently serving as elected city officials have only a few weeks' experience with him in their governmental capacity.

I don't know if Mayor Corbin considers me a malcontent -- I disagree with him occasionally, so maybe he does -- or whether he would allow me to speak on Tuesday.  If he did, this is what I would say:

What each council member should keep in mind is that he or she will have to answer the question "Why did you vote to hire Glenn Morrison, one of the most important actions of your term, so soon after you took office?"   With the grace of God and the character of Mr Morrison, the question will not arise in a Connie Green-like context,  but at the very latest it will come up in the next campaign.


The five newly-elected members (and I'll include Mr Lower, who was appointed not long before a quorum of the previous council was recalled) will be able to give the following answers if they act today:

1. It was what Mayor Corbin wanted us to to.
2. Many individuals, including former Mayor Hancock and Bob Blair, spoke highly of Glenn Morrison.
3. I had observed him as a citizen before I was elected to council and from what I could see, he did the Acting City Manager job well.

What the members should want to answer, and how I want them to be able to answer, and how they need to answer in order to rebuild citizen trust in the Council -- is

• In my capacity as council member, I observed Mr Morrison through the budget process.  I paid attention to the way he resolved conflicts, unwound complexities, achieved consensus and presented results both within the city staff and between staff and council.  After that, it was a no-brainer.

I have no doubt that Glenn Morrison will be Killeen City Manager and will be a good one.  I have a great deal of doubt that the City Council will come to that conclusion for the right reasons.  If you act today, you will almost certainly be doing the right thing for the wrong reasons, and you will not be able to justify your action.

Fathers Day

I spent some quality time with my wife and children and their families; and thought a lot about my own father, who passed 6 years ago.  Fathers Day is not just for the living.

Tonight's council workshop

There were presentations by the Central Texas Council of Governments and the city Water and Sewer department.  The theme might have been "and now for the folks in charge of the big ticket items."

CTCOG is a "quasi-governmental" organization formed mainly because there is a need for regional coordination of services and infrastructure improvements, but no government entity responsible for the region.  They deal with large amounts of money, mainly from federal and state grants.  Killeen is the largest city in the region.  The presentation was concise and no red flags were raised except that Scott Cosper, the recalled mayor pro tem, still represents the Killeen city government on the Council.   Mr Cosper was praised for his performance in this role, but it seems clear to me that the interests of the city would best be served by having an elected representative on the council.  City council members didn't ask about that.

The water and sewer presentation was longer than it had to be and was delivered in a tone I thought might be condescending.  Nevertheless it was good information and contained facts the city council will need to internalize before considering the budget.  There was enough emphasis on the reasonableness of the current water rate ($3 per thousand gallons) that I suspect there will be some effort to raise it (and that would not necessarily be a bad decision).

I hope that both the CTCOG and Water-and-Sewer presentations will be put on the city web site.

Video madness

Good news: the city of Killeen finally inches into the 21st century by offering streams of city meetings.

Bad news: It's microsoft only.  For some bizarre reason which I'm sure they'll be hand-waving about for years to come, they chose to reject the many popular low-cost open solutions for a proprietary one.

This is something I can contribute to the budget process:  if city Information Technology persists in using over-priced, incompatible and obsolete technology, maybe they should stop doing that.

(And yes, I'm familiar with mono Moonlight.  And its limitations.)

Update:  I have to back off, at least a little.  As much as I oppose proprietary solutions, both because of the cost and the inconveniences  they inevitably impose on users, working with video involves a lot of hard choices.  Silverlight is probably the worst of the available choices in terms of lock-in and inconvenience -- I certainly would't start there -- but there might be circumstances (previous investment in hardware and software, for example) that make it a better choice than it seems on the surface.

Update, again.  Nope. Completely unusable on Linux.  If anyone has tried it with a Mac, please let me know.  As long as all you want to do is watch from beginning to end (2.5 hours with lots of gaps for yesterday's recording) it is OK.  If you try to move forward or back, it hangs.

Good and bad about a note from the mayor

I feel really good about receiving a hand-written note from Mayor Corbin thanking me for my participation at the city budget hearing.  He even included a sentence indicating he remembered something I said.

I feel really bad that in a city of 130,000 -- one of the biggest cities I've ever lived in -- the mayor can send hand-written notes to the people who participated in the city budget hearing.

City/owner agreements

I promised to blog a bit about city/owner agreements, and I prefer to keep my promises, but I don't think I understand enough to be very helpful.  City/owner agreements are primarily used to reimburse property owners (in practice, mainly subdivision developers) for costs  incurred at the city's request. The most common case (and one that is on tomorrow night's City Council agenda) is that the city has asked that a street be wider than the minimum 36 feet required (somewhere) for a platted subdivision street.

The idea is that it would not be fair to make the developer pay all the additional cost for a more expensive street.  The best explanation I've found (and it's not a very good one) is by Connie Green in a 2006 KDH article.  According to the article, the city may reimburse the developer for 30% of the additional cost (although I thought the city staff said that the city may reimburse up to 30% of the total cost -- I may have misunderstood).

The KDH article suggests that there is a court ruling requiring the city to enter into these agreements.

I think city/owner agreements are complicated enough to require at least more extensive discussion in tomorrow's 1-hour pre-meeting Council Workshop.  And if any council member feels that more discussion is appropriate, or that public discussion in a formal council meeting would be helpful, I encourage him or her to request removing the item from the Consent Agenda (where it is CA-5b) and lacing it on the main agenda for the meeting.

KDH Editorial "Asking public input on city manager's contract..."

I like this editorial.  I don't agree with parts of it, but I really like it.

I'm not even going to mention the parts I disagree with (oh, OK "the last city manager's buyout clause was a bit excessive": ya think?).  That the Killeen Daily Advertiser grew up enough to print today's editorial is an event I've long wished for. I congratulate the editorial staff whole-heartedly.

The last three paragraphs of the piece (it's 1/5 of the page) are the heart of the argument.  I think it's fair use to extract them here:

....Why didn't the city solicit opinions on promoting Morrison before moving ahead with the vote? 

If public input is so important, why didn't the city solicit opinions on promoting Morrison before moving ahead with the the vote? 

Indeed, if the council thinks enough of Killeen's residents to seek their input on the terms and conditions of an important city contract, shouldn't it also give them a say on who is offered that contract in the first place?

I've wondered the same thing.  Yesterday morning, Ralph Cossey, one of the candidates in last month's city council election, posted much the same sentiment.

Here's advice for Jared Foster and the other members of the ad-hoc committee for the City Manager contract:  Go slow.  Not only should you collect input from citizens, you should circulate it and make it the subject of public discussion.   Your job is not only to choose a competent city manager, but to convince the people in this town that you know what you are doing.  The faster you go, and with the less public discussion, the harder it will be to carry the second point.

Blogging void

Sorry, but with work problems and illness in the family, my mind has not been on Killeen politics this weekend.  There are a couple of interesting things going on, and I'll probably comment on some of them next week:

• The mayor spend several days at the Texas Republican Party Meeting in Dallas.  He served as parliamentarian for some of the proceedings.  It's probably a positive thing that our mayor has some state-wide exposure.
• A few more people, notably Ralph Cossey, have expressed concerns about the process of bringing Glenn Morrison on as City Manager.  This could become an early defining issue for the new city council.
• I've had a half-dozen conversations this week about how the city splits costs with developers when the city wants platted roads to be upgraded; it's all about being fair, but there is a range of opinion about what is fair to whom. 

So that's my to-do list, along with preparing for Tuesday's regular council meeting.

Social networking warning

If you have an account at Linkedin.com, it's quite likely that your user-id and password have been compromised.  See http://arstechnica.com/security/2012/06/8-million-leaked-passwords-connected-to-linkedin/

If you have an account there, and you use the same password for accounts at other sites like Facebook or Google, then those accounts are at risk, too.  At a minimum, change your password(s).  If you are using the same password at different sites, stop doing that.  If you are using a pattern for your passwords, like "google.foo", "facebook.foo", etc., stop doing that, too.

I misspoke

No I didn't.  I babbled.  At tonight's city budget hearing I wanted to make a point about concentrating on budget line items that carry the highest cost.  What I said was "Duh...".

Here's what I sent to citybudget@killeentexas.gov after the meeting:

I didn't say what I wanted to say at tonight's city budget meeting when i talked about focus on big-ticket items in the budget.  What I meant to say is that we tend to argue a lot about line items without always weighing their importance in the overall budget; and that (at least during public budget discussions) I've rarely seen discussions below the level of line items.

There are a few high-dollar line items that dominate the budget.  I would like the city and the city council to pay particular attention to these high-impact items, looking closely at the expenditures they comprise.  The impact of reducing a $1 million line item by 10% is the same as eliminating a $100,000 line item.

I am certain that this kind of analysis is frequent in the budget process, but it is rarely discussed publicly.  It would be good if I as a public "budget reviewer" could see that the $1 million plan was preferred over the $900,000 alternative for reasons x, y and z.

Budget hearing tomorrow

I'm not sure how to explain it to my boss, but I intend to take off work early again tomorrow to attend the city budget hearing  at 1800 in the Utility Collections Building large conference room.  I hope I see you there. Just in case, I also sent comments to the budget email address, citybudget@killeentexas.gov

Here's what I sent.  I bet you can do better, especially if you have items you think belong on the wish list:


There are two aspects of the city budget process that I think get less attention than they should, and which are especially important in years when a guiding assumption is that expenditures must stay nearly constant.

The first is that we should be explicit about what we decide to forego.  Somewhere (I hope) there is a budget wish-list where all the ideas for things we could spend money on go to die.  The list I imagine has  ideas good, bad and debatable; but which share the common fate that they did not make the cut for the 2012/13 budget.  The list should be part of the public budget review.

The second is that we should clearly understand the consequences of austerity.  I'm pretty sure this is being done internally, but is not being well communicated.  To take a made-up example, say KPD budgeted no increase in their expenditure for 2012/13 over 2011/12.  We know that in general their costs for existing services will rise 2% over that period.  What will KPD do in this hypothetical case to make up that 2%?

• Will they cut patrol hours?
• Will they trim administrative staff?
• Will they forego fleet upgrades?
• Will they get a grant to cover the difference?
• Will they discover and eliminate inefficiencies (and if so, where)?

This is of course not meant to pick on Chief Baldwin and his department. Rather it should be a public part of the analysis of every department's budget.  Understanding the differences in what we get for our money this year as compared to last is a key part of making sure we are making the right budget decisions.

Bob Blair

Sorry, that was seriously wrong scheduling information

I wrote last night's blog under the mistaken impression that tonight was a regular city council meeting night.  It could't be, of course, because it's the first, not the second, Tuesday.  I plead overwork (and I'm sticking to that story.)  I was right about the timing, though, we didn't get to the council budget priorities (none were presented that I heard; Glenn Morrison re-presented some priority slides from the March budget meeting) or the City Manager contract committee until around 1915, when the room was mostly empty.

It was a pretty good workshop meeting, all in all.  I'll write about it next.

They're not going to cover this in an hour

Here is the agenda for tomorrow's City Council Workshop:

 DS-1 Receive a Briefing from the Fort Hood Garrison Commander’s Office Regarding Services and Operations
DS-2 Receive an Operations Briefing from Bell County Water Control and Improvement District #1
DS-3 Discuss City Council Agenda Items and Land Use Cases
DS-4 Receive a Briefing on the Budget Process to Date and Discuss Council Priorities
DS-5 Receive a Briefing from the City Manager Negotiating Committee on the status of negotiations. 

Whoever set this agenda was certainly optimistic.  I don't see a single item that can be covered well in 12 minutes, and apparently each of them is supposed to be.

The key items are DS-3, DS-4 and DS-5.  DS-1 and DS-2 involve guest speakers; these items will go first.  They have to do DS-3 before the regular council meeting; otherwise it would be irrelevant.  That means that DS-4 and DS-5 will take place sometime after the council meeting, around 1930 if things go as they have been, when there will be few people left in the audience.

I'm sure the mayor and the council would join me in asking everyone to attend these discussions.  Council budget priorities and the status of city manager contract negotiations are important and should be carried on in front of a strong audience.  I do think it's a mistake to schedule them in such a way that they either will be curtailed or conducted late in the evening.

KDH Editorial: good job

The Killeen Daily Herald, in one of their rare expressions of opinion on local matters, pretty much agreed with the views I expressed in this space two weeks ago:  there's no hurry to hire Glenn Morrison as City Manager even though he appears to be a very strong candidate.

Mayor Dan Corbin was upset with the editorial. In a facebook post this morning he wrote

While I was drinking my coffee this morning I read the factually inaccurate editorial in the Killeen Daily Herald about the performance of the Council and me. Whoever writes that garbage must have really poor judgment; they certainly have no experience in public service. I want more transparency out of KDH---have the author of the editorial column sign it.

I'm upset with KDH about a lot of issues, too, but not about any raised by Mayor Corbin.  First of all, I see little "factual inaccuracy".  I was present at those public meetings, and the paper got it right, for the most part.  (You don't have to believe either of us: you can replay the sessions from the city web site.) Second, in a real newspaper (I do not include KDH in this category), editorial opinion is decided by a committee.  There is neither a need nor a purpose for the committee to sign their names.

KDH and I disagree on the right time for the council to vote on Glenn Morrison's appointment.  I suggested late June; the paper thought September might be appropriate.  I think reasonable people can disagree on this point.

The point to take home with you is that the City Council has every reason to proceed deliberately in selecting the next city manager, and has nothing to gain by moving precipitately. 

Killeen quality-of-life post

No politics tonight.  I'm all warm and mellow from kayaking on Stillhouse Hollow Reservoir and catching 10 fish.  Life is good.