Council should reflect on uncomfortable trend

1:32 PM Friday, October 1, 2010

While Middletown City Council prepares for its first meeting in October, today is an opportune time to review an unmistakable trend occurring in council chambers: The unwillingness of some members to trust the recommendations of city administrators.

Let’s get one notion straight before we proceed. We don’t elect City Council members to rubber-stamp every proposal that administrators put before them. We expect there to be healthy, constructive discussion — and even arguments. And we certainly don’t expect every vote to be unanimous.

However, there must be some middle ground between rubber-stamping and what’s been occurring for the past couple of years. Consider some examples:

• For two hours on Sept. 21, council debated and agonized over a recommendation from City Manager Judy Gilleland and community revitalization director Doug Adkins to fire the city’s Section 8 program contractor, Consoc Housing Consultants. In the end, council voted 6-1 to end its contract with Consoc, but the drawn-out discussion made clear that some council members had trust issues with the recommendation and with Gilleland and Adkins.

• Soon after Gilleland arrived in Middletown in early 2008, she recommended that the city turn over its Section 8 program to another governmental housing agency altogether, but previous council members ignored her and decided to keep it under the city’s purview.

• Later in 2008, when Gilleland recommended that another company be hired to replace Consoc, that council voted 4-3 to renew its contract with the company — despite concerns about performance — and to again ignore its city manager’s recommendation. Much of the turmoil we saw Sept. 21 could have been avoided if council had followed either of Gilleland’s Section 8 recommendations in 2008.

• A recent recommendation to update the city’s historic district ordinance was greeted with distrust by some council members who suggested administrators were trying to give the city’s historic commission too much power. The update was passed by a 5-2 vote after considerable discussion at two meetings.

• In late 2009, while trying to set a budget for 2010, Gilleland’s recommendation to downsize and reorganize all city departments was undermined when four council members voted at the last minute to delay eliminating four police and fire department jobs.

• Earlier this year, administrators were chagrined after they recommended a downtown land swap — that would have seen the city paying $95,000 for a property that had just sold for $50,000 — and council members correctly balked at the deal.

• In 2008, Gilleland recommended that council not grant a waiver on utility tap-in fees for the Atrium Family YMCA, but council voted to grant the waiver anyway — by a 5-1 vote.

• More recently, in late June, Gilleland and other administrators took a very public trip to the woodshed when council was forced to come up with an additional $170,000 to complete the Sutphin Street repaving project when undetected concrete deterioration was discovered by the contractor, delaying the project’s completion. (The project was to have been completely funded by a federal stimulus grant, and the needed $170,000 had to be diverted from other local accounts.) Some council members expressed concerns about administrators’ competency at the June 29 meeting.

These examples are not presented in order to judge whether the recommendations and subsequent votes were right or wrong; they’re presented in order to show that council has been unwilling or reluctant at times to follow the recommendations of the administrators they employ.

That’s not to suggest that council members are obliged to follow all recommendations without question; however, at some point, they must trust and let their staff do its job without interference. As a longtime City Hall observer, we don’t recall the three previous city managers — Ron Olsen, Bill Becker (now a council member) and Steve Husemann — receiving the same level of skeptical treatment and lack of respect that Gilleland has experienced in her 2½ years in Middletown.

Take this observation for what it’s worth. It’s neither an endorsement of the city administration’s performance and past recommendations, nor is it a call for a change in personnel. However, the situation is too obvious and uncomfortable to ignore.

Consider it a call for council members to reflect and to consider why they continue to employ administrators with whom they often seem to disagree and second-guess. After the sharp, tense exchanges between council members and administrators at the televised Sept. 21 meeting, it’s a question that is probably on many Middletown residents’ minds.