Additional Community Conversations will be a waste of time
Why would the Morgan Hill City Council want to spend $50,000 more on the so-called “Community Conversations” process when everyone knows by now the effort was unproductive and pretty much a waste of money.
The $50,000 is on top of the $110,000 that the city has spent since January to mostly pay La-Jolla-based Viewpoint Learning Inc. to help facilitate the dialogue with citizens about how to solve an impending million budget deficit, a shortfall that is no longer as gloomy as predicted. About $85,000 went for consulting services.
Having a few more conversations is not going to solve this dilemma. Seriously reaching out to the public by holding public meetings that cost little if no money at all should be considered. A simple survey would have generated information for our city leaders to consider revenue raising options and possible cost reductions preferred by our citizenry. City leaders didn’t need to hold more than 25 conversations with participants who were not randomly selected and were not representative of the community at large.
Three years ago three council members were recalled from office. We wonder if our council members are afraid of being thrown out of office if they’re perceived uncaring about what their constituents think. They have been criticized in the past for not adequately communicating with the citizens. They have forgotten that one of the most important aspects of effective communication is listening.
The lack of interest in the conversation process spoke clearly about what our citizens want. The argument could be made that the city didn’t publicize the previous conversations well enough. So why would we continue to spend money to have the same staff who failed in the first place try again to do a decent public outreach job? Feedback from those who attended was that they perceived the process a waste of time.
One question our city leaders need to ask is why didn’t their first attempt work. They then should try to attempt truly communicating with our citizens. As this responsibility was handled by the city manager’s office, which just lost one of its key assistants, it seems to be heading in the wrong direction already. The council should be focusing energy on finding this replacement or eliminating it to save money.
Our city leaders did not tell the complete truth about how they went about getting the first round of participants to the conversations. In one group, those who participated were supposed to be in a class and were told to attend the meeting. That’s hardly allowing these individuals their free agency and that’s not the way to get people to attend meetings to discuss important city issues.
We elected our city leaders to make wise budget decisions for us. We believe they’re capable of reviewing on their own our revenue projections for the next five years. We also believe they must stand up to staff members who have convinced them that the conversations are an integral part of the civic engagement process for they are not.
Stop wasting taxpayers dollars and begin truly communicating with constituents by being forthright about the budget deficit and ways being considered to balance it. Also, accept what the citizens are saying about the process and respect their lack of interest and accept it for what it is: No trust in local government.
