Readers gave the Morgan Hill City Council average grades in May
as part of the Times’ Accountability in Community Leadership
Project.
Morgan Hill – Readers gave the Morgan Hill City Council average grades in May as part of the Times’ Accountability in Community Leadership Project.
More than 50 members of the public handed down mostly Bs and Cs on six goals the council set in January which were included in a report card published by the newspaper and running on its Web site.
The Times Editorial Board, chaired by Mainstreet Media Group Publisher Steve Staloch, gave Morgan Hill Mayor Steve Tate and council members Larry Carr, Mark Grzan, Marby Lee and Greg Sellers higher marks than the general public, issuing five As and one B in the six areas.
Carr, Lee and Sellers also rated their work well, mostly giving Bs for their accomplishments.
In May, the newspaper published the report card with six of more than 20 goals adopted by the council during its January retreat.
The goals on the May report card had March and April completion dates.
They included:
n Holding a workshop to review $20 million worth of public-infrastructure projects for the next five years;
n Holding a workshop on the future of the Friendly Inn and El Toro Youth Center;
n Reviewing workplans for the 2007-08 fiscal year prepared by the council’s five advisory committees and accepting quarterly written reports;
n Fine-tuning a strategy to increase jobs to allow workers to afford Morgan Hill’s cost of living;
n Continuing an effort to revitalize downtown’s defunct Granada Theater;
n Evaluating the Morgan Hill Police Department’s ability to meet future public safety needs for the growing population.
Tate, who’s been serving as mayor since January, gave himself mostly passing grades with the exception of an incomplete in the area of council committee working plans, which have been submitted but have not been finalized by the council. The committees assist the council in setting policies in the areas of public safety, utilities and environment, economic development, city finance and administration and regional transportation and planning.
Carr awarded five As and one B, the exception being committee reporting. He acknowledged the committees he serves on, utilities and environment committee and public safety committee, have not issued a quarterly written report.
Regarding workload, Carr said meeting target dates for goals is important, but not as vital as producing good public policy.
“As a council member I support attaching ‘target dates’ to our goals in order to help understand the workload and organization of our work plan throughout the year,” Carr wrote in an e-mail to Times editor Sheila Sanchez. “However, I believe it is far more important to understand an issue in order to create the best policy position for Morgan Hill. If the ‘target dates’ become the focus, I fear that rushing to judgment will facilitate poor decision making and perhaps bad public policy.”
Grzan also declined to give grades, saying, “We do so much and we can still do more … we are not perfect but have high standards so that even if we fall short, we didn’t fall that far.”
Grzan offered constructive criticism on the project, saying it’s a good start to scrutinize elected officials, but the grading criteria the newspaper picked do not reflect all the work the council does.
The newspaper launched the civic journalism project in March to track council and Morgan Hill Unified School District trustee progress on goals the leaders set.
Tate wrote in a June 1 Times guest column that he believes the newspaper’s project is well-intentioned, but its implementation needs improvement.
“I applaud the Times for engaging citizens for the purpose of improving the community … but merely providing report-card grades, based primarily on council time-frame goals and brief status summaries of them is neither collaboration nor true engagement/involvement,” Tate wrote.
Tate said the goals are “binary” in nature and not conducive to “grading.”
Times Editor Sheila Sanchez explained the newspaper approached Tate early during the year to explain the project. When Tate declined to provide criteria/goals for the project, the editorial board felt using council-approved goals would be the best way to track the council’s public service.
Lee, the newest member of the council, gave the group a B overall. She said the group met initial deadlines, but more work lies ahead.
“I’m finding so far in my tenure as a council member that, when looking at the many aspects of the issues we are dealing with, things take a little longer than I and many residents realized,” Lee wrote in an e-mail.
Sellers, who joined the council in 1998 with Tate, also said progress is taking longer than expected.
“That’s just part of the public process,” he said in an e-mail. “So, I would give us a B+ on all these projects.”
This is the first year the newspaper has conducted the Accountability in Community Leadership Project.
The Morgan Hill Unified School District received grades in April and is scheduled to be reviewed again in August on goals with May and June completion dates.
The council will undergo more evaluations this year. The upcoming goals include crafting an environmental agenda that includes habitat conservation and clean-air strategies and evaluating fire and emergency medical service levels, among many others.
The Times hopes the project informs readers about school trustees and city council members’ work as elected officials.
While the method of evaluation is unscientific, the newspaper feels the exercise promotes a free exchange of ideas on the performance of elected officials. The project has given the Times the opportunity to reach out to the community and its readers by distribution of the report card at various public functions, meetings with the editor and online report-card publication.
