Interesting N&R front-pager (link via Ed Cone) on the departure of two respected veteran Greensboro city staff members, Water Resources Director Allan Williams and Environmental Services Director Jeryl Covington. These departures come about a week after City Attorney Rita Danish separated from her new bosses, the City Council.
The gist of the article is Williams and Covington are fed up because the council just doesn’t listen to city staff. While the council took Williams’ heed and opposed the Jordan Lake Rules —and finally securing a little breathing room—– a previous council disregarded Covington’s recommendation not to close the White Street landfill, and we see where that’s led. So the decision whether or not to take city staff’s advice is a little more nuanced than council member and landfill opponent Dianne Bellamy-Small might think:
Councilwoman T. Dianne Bellamy-Small said the council has micromanaged the staff and ignored their professional advice. Employee morale is low, she said.
“This council doesn’t want to hear what staff says should and should not be done. That is why we have been looking so inefficient, incompetent,” she said.
I’ve watched a lot of City Council meetings and while you can say a lot about that group, I’ve never seen a council member treat a staff member with disrespect. They ask some hard questions, and personally I wish they’d ask harder questions. One thing to keep in mind is city staff is in the business of spending taxpayers’ money. Put it this way —if City Manager Rashad Young starts buddying with a conservative council and signs on for massive budget cuts, he’s not going to be a real popular guy around the workplace, is he? So his job is to grow city government to keep his employees happy. It’s the job of elected officials to keep government in check, which in turn creates an adversarial relationship. Unfortunately, they don’t do such a good job, in my opinion.
One other thing I found interesting is council member Jim Kee’s comment that “(i)t’s almost impossible to replace someone like Allan Williams…..You just can’t bring in somebody to fill his shoes.” Hey, all good things come to an end. Williams is quoted in the article stating he’s “the wizened old age of 60,” so it’s a good bet they’d have to replace him sooner rather later anyway.
