Post in game playing with council interview packet for Monday 5/12

May 09 22:18 UTC

All,

For those of you who wonder why, as the Pioneer Press said today, I am a
"frequent and vocal critic of some city staff and council members since
leaving office" let this current incident serve as a prime example.

Since I left office, there has been a significant amount of what I term as
either game playing or maybe just simple incompetence on the part of one or
two city staff members when it comes to the distribution of certain pieces
of public information, mainly the council packets and the videotaping,
broadcasting, and rebroadcasting of council meetings on Cable 16.

Maybe my standards are a little too high, and maybe I am asking too much
from employees that cost taxpayers over $100,000 a year each.  Maybe we need
to pay employees $250,000 a year to get results.  I guess I will let all of
you be the judge.

This saga starts when I go to the city website at 4pm to find information as
to when the council meeting is going to begin on Monday.  Well the agenda on
the website says the council meeting starts at 6pm.  I know the council
members are meeting sometime before 6pm because the interviews of the
candidates wishing to be appointed to Tom Kough's seat start are being done
that same day.

So I figure that the council packet, which is the agenda plus the supporting
materials, would have the information I am looking for.  Well guess again.
The packet also makes it look like the meeting begins at 6pm.  They have
lots of information on various agenda items, but nothing about interviews.

So I send an email to city hall on the issue at 2:51pm and wait.  When it
got to 4:06pm, I called city hall by phone.  Mind you this is 24 minutes
before closing time.  So I ask about the missing information and why it is
not posted on the website.  Note that we have been posting council packets
on the website since 2000.  Well the response I got is that the agenda and
applications were not posted to the website.

So to be clear, the agenda and materials from the second half of the meeting
WAS posted to the website but the agenda and materials from the first half
of the meeting WAS NOT posted.

Note that the council members typically receive this material at their homes
in paper form on THURSDAY, or yesterday.

After pressing the question as to what happened to the materials from the
first half of the meeting and then being put on hold, I got the file emailed
directly to me from an office assistant who is NOT responsible for doing
this, so I do appreciate this person's assistance in going above and beyond
the call of duty.  Then the network administrator, who is also NOT
responsible for dealing with this problem either, was kind enough to send me
a link to the agenda.  Note this was the agenda for the interviews, not the
applications.

So I now discover that the agenda for the first half of the meeting, the
interviews, is on the website.  But problem is that no typically human being
could possibly find it since it was not linked to anything having to do with
the Monday council meeting.  The file was buried in an electronic file
cabinet of sorts that is accessible through the archive section.  So great,
now I find the agenda.  But when I open the file, it states that the first
half of the council meeting and the interviews are going to be held in the
Aspen Room.

Well the Aspen Room has no TV cameras.  So is this going to be televised?
Good question.  Just a few months ago, the communications staff as a matter
of personal desire were playing games with the televising of meetings.
Certain meetings were being broadcasted live over Cable 16, but then never
replayed or put on the internet for viewing.  Other meetings were replayed
multiple times.  No rhyme or reason that I could ever figure out.

So the communications department, which I believe pays out somewhere around
the range of $200,000 in salary and benefits for two full time employees, is
doing what?  For the record, I get paid $0 for addressing this.

Thankfully my raising cane brought this issue to the attention of another
employee who is the city's network administrator.  Now he is NOT responsible
for the work of getting these council agendas and packets posted
appropriately.  I have been told that this is the job of the communications
department.  But the network administrator graciously stepped forward to do
his best to correct this problem after the work day is now officially over.

This isn't the first time by any stretch of the imagination that the
communications department has dropped the ball on something that is a basic
administrative function.  This isn't the first time the network
administrator has volunteered to step forward to pick up the pieces the
communications department leaves behind.

I ask that the supervisor of the communications department, City Manager
Bill Malinen, address these problems.

I ask the supervisor of the network administrator, who I believe is still
Finance Director Chris Miller, thank his employee for stepping forward to
clean up the mess when it isn't his job to do this.  His efforts are
appreciated, especially on a sunny 66 degree Friday afternoon after work
hours.

For those who have read my posting or at least skimmed it, there is a reward
for you.  Instead of spending the next 30 minutes or more trying to find the
council packet for the first half of Monday's council meeting, which is the
council interviews for Tom Kough's seat, I have posted a quick and easy link
to it here.  On this link, you will find the agenda and the applications for
the 12 who applied.  Maybe if you are lucky, they will televise the
interviews starting at 3:40pm this coming Monday on Cable 16.

If you do find this information on the front page of the city website
sometime after I post this commentary, you will know which employee to thank
and who NOT to thank for getting the work done.

http://www.ksolutionsllc.com/080512_interview_packet.pdf