At the end of our City Council Meeting last night, we had a 30 minute Executive Session that was extended to 50 minutes. I am not supposed to divulge the contents of that meeting, but click on the above link and Councilmember Achziger has a comment as to why he did not attend.
…the Mayor has told me that the Council will shortly be going into an executive session to discuss potential litigation against the Des Moines Legacy Foundation. As a Legacy board member I have a remote interest in the topic and therefore recusing myself from the process to protect both my integrity and that of the Council.
Now, we actually could have concluded the purpose of that meeting within 30 minutes. However, the discussion veered off in another direction, hence the extension. The hard feelings have obviously not abated. There were some personal attacks. It got to the edge of ugly, but stopped just short.
And… we’re gonna have another discussion about it on 31 March. Woo hoo!
I have said over and over and over, to all sides. “Let. It. Go. We have to work together. Genuine cooperation.”
Civility
During the last campaign, several candidates spoke often of ‘civility’. I understood why they did it. But personally, I hated it. To me, civility implied politeness; not mean sincere cooperation.
But many voters wanted to believe Gene Achziger, Harry Steinmetz and Matt Mahoney that things would be different people. Surely the problem was the crabby Matt Pina and Luisa Bangs.
And I’m like, noooooo man. 😀 That’s so not the problem.
Phone call
So I decided to call Mayor Mahoney to protest the bad personal conduct and ask him to not allow things to devolve as in the previous Council. I also protested the fact that we have no place in our current meetings to ask questions of the City Manager, as we’ve had in the past, and as every other city has.
Before I continue. I generally maintain confidence as the default option. If you speak with me you can I assume I will keep your side of the conversation confidential, whether you ask for it or not. But conversations between electeds and staff on City business are meant to be part of the public record so I have no problem related the following, because it has policy significance, it does not divulge any personal information, and it had nothing to do with that Executive Session.
The Mayor told me that:
- I am generally suspected of constantly blurting out confidential stuff. He offered no evidence. That has not happened, it does not happen, it will not happen. Most people know how to maintain professional boundaries.
- Mayor Mahoney has no intention of intervening to obtain professional cooperation from the City Manager.
- I have offended the City Manager. And therefore it is up to me, as it is the responsibility of all CMs responsibilities to get along with Michael Matthias. “You have a lot of fences to mend.”
- “You say a lot of bad things about us. And we’re monitoring you.”
I leave it to you to decide who ‘us’ is. And what “we’re monitoring you” means.
After that conversation, the City Manager wanted to punctuate a message that came up during Executive Session by sending an email blast to all the attendees of that meeting and a few others who were not for good measure.
The contents of the emails are from ex-City employee, Sue Padden, a former board member of Legacy and a party to a litigation against Mr. Matthias.
However, the emails have nothing to do with Legacy or the lawsuit. She was replying to a blog post I wrote about parliamentary procedure. They were vacuumed up in the City’s law suit discovery process.
The insinuation being of course that, because this person responded to a blog post I wrote, that there is some connection which makes me suspect–even though the legal settlement has nothing to do with that stuff.
It’s just schoolyard nonsense: Us and Them. as the old song goes.
Aren’t you making it worse?
The only reason to post this is
- There’s this world that you the public cannot see. CMs and the Administration rarely say anything real on the record. The rancor the public finds distasteful in public is small fraction of the childish nonsense in private settings such as phone calls and Executive Sessions.
- And because you don’t see 95% of it, that makes it hard to understand what’s really going on and how petty it really is.
- But regardless of your feelings as to ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, it’s just a huge time suck. And time is money. The amount of hours and energy everyone puts into these feuds is ridonculous. And for that reason alone, it’s worth getting past.
No dog in this fight…
When people discuss how hard it is to change politics in Des Moines, this is part of the reason why. People do not let things go. They make decisions based on implied ‘tribes’, whilst attempting to look as civil as possible in public.
The funny thing is? I have absolutely no dog in these fights. People constantly mistake my desire for fairness (and saving money!) with taking one side or another. Everything from the Legacy litigation to Anthony Martinelli to the recent appointment process, all I care about is the money.
Arguments and litigation about ‘my reputation!’ are all a complete waste of time because there is never any victory.
And how dare you suggest otherwise, Councilmember Harris!