Is this any way to professionally manage our City?

Is this any way to professionally manage our City?

True to my prediction this week, in the final Commission meeting prior to George Gretsas’ departure on July 31, the Commission (at 3:15AM!) decided to select an Interim City Manager, to serve until their next meeting on August 17. Three names came up: City Auditor John Herbst (the most qualified), City Attorney Harry Stewart, and Assistant City Manager Allyson Love, a former City Budget Director and a Gretsas protege. Allyson Love was selected in less than 25 minutes.

First, I have to say this (and for all you Seiler supporters, I apologize). But the conclusion of this week’s Commission meeting was laughable. It was a joke. It is simply an embarrassment that our elected officials (who have had 10MONTHS to set up a selection process for a new City Manager), would wait until the last possible moment, at 3:15 in the morning to throw out 3 names and then vote an interim City Manager in. No public discussion, no selection process, no neighborhood input.

This, to select someone who is authorized to write checks for millions, who is responsible for proper allocation of our tax dollars, who must effectively manage an organization of 2,600 employees, and who needs to be intelligently working now on a new fiscally-responsible budget for 2010/2011. This interim City Manager was selected with all the care and planning that one would take in selecting a potted plant.

Worse, the person selected is a Gretsas’ lackey. This lady is the one who (last year), stood up as Budget Director in the Commission meeting and publicly declared that last year’s budget was “zero-based”. That was a complete fabrication and she knows it. She was doing Gretsas’ bidding and we ended up with a budget that was tens of millions of dollars more than it should have been ($605M). For her lying to the Commission she was promoted to Assistant City Manager.

So guess who will be pulling the strings behind the scenes now? (HINT: Gretsas!) Does anyone believe that either she or our Commission will have an epiphany over the next two months and finally develop a fiscally responsible budget? It will be “déjà-vu all over again”; as a new $612 million dollar budget (using up the rest of our available reserves while handing out fat salary raises to overpaid City employees) gets approved.

Mayor Seiler thus continues to demonstrate his incompetence as a Mayor. As a career politician, he should know better than to put the interests of bureaucrats over the interests of the tax payer. Yet Seiler, along with Commissioners DuBose and Rogers, spoke nothing of the financial hardships of Fort Lauderdale residents and the need to reduce their tax burden; their concern instead was for Gretsas who receives compensation of more than $325,000 a year, and who has received over $1.5 million in total compensation from us over the last six years. Here are some quotes heard at this week’s meeting:

Seiler:  “Unfortunately, we are stuck with this situation” (If you had done your job as Mayor, Jack, we wouldn’t be in this situation!)  “I’ve made calls to help him (Gretsas) find employment.” (Jack- How about making calls to help the Fort Lauderdale taxpayer looking for work??)

Rogers: “Let’s don’t upset the apple cart. It will be a lot easier for him (Gretsas) to find a job if he already has one. Let’s keep him employed until he finds another job”. (Romney- I wish you could spare a fraction of your sentiment for the thousands of Fort Lauderdale residents and voters who don’t have a job now and have been looking for months…)

DuBose: “It will be tough for Gretsas to find a job in this economic situation. There’s a human side to this” (Bobby- You should be ashamed of yourself! With thousands of people in your district unemployed, you’re worried about someone who we, as taxpayers have made a millionaire over the last 6 years? Are you kidding me?)

The logic of these three elected officials, along with the process to select an Interim City Manager is difficult to understand.

If you would like to see how this comedy of errors played out this week, click on: http://fortlauderdale.gov/commission/video_broadcast.htm, go to the “regular meeting” for July 7 and scroll the video to 8:45 to see how the discussion goes in picking a new City Manager. We, as residents of one of the most beautiful cities in the world, deserve much better than this!

Are you fed up with continued bloated City budgets, watseful spending and fat city employee salaries? Do you want to do something about it? A number of us are meeting and developing a plan to deal with this. Soon you will be able to play your part. We will be announcing a movement later this month on this web site. Stay tuned! 

Earl Rynerson