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| Cock and Bull, Matt Sesow |
We have come full circle. As a result of the familiar fraud of musical chairs made possible by four-year terms, one of the most incompetent and dishonest mayors in Portsmouth history, Jim Kalb, is mayor again, at least in name. Because of the current crisis in Portsmouth’s city government, concerned citizens should read City Manager Derek Allen’s “Open Letter to
the City Council,” which is bundled with his July 14, 2014 city manager’s report,
located on the city’s website. (See link in Appendix A, below or click here for the report and then scroll down seventeen pages.) Allen’s Open Letter
confirms the suspicion that instead of being part of the solution, Allen, as city manager, is part of the problem. He is very ambitious, but as city manager he has, statutorily, virtually no power. As city manager, Allen has lots of responsibilities but very little authority. His primary responsibility, as city manager, is to carry out the policies and directives of the city council. If Allen is worn to a frazzle after only six months, it may in part be because in addition to his many responsibilities he is also a commuting city manager who still makes his home in Piqua, Ohio, some two and half hour drive from Portsmouth. He doesn't commute every day of course, but even weekend commuting would be tiring.
The city manager form of government is a misleading misnomer; it should be called the city council form of government. But Allen appears to think that as city manager he has quite a bit of power. As he writes in his Open Letter, "I stated that there was a methodical plan to be installed and that I knew the steps to ensure success. I intended to implement changes to turn Portsmouth around and cease people laughing at this community." One of the steps that would "cease people laughing" at Portsmouth was having a city manager form of government and hiring a leader like himself to be city manager. "The city," he wrote, "had no other choice but to turn the operations over to a professional [himself] in order to reverse the present course or face failure and financial collapse." Instead of being the servant of the city council, he often sounds in his letter like its master. "On February 4, 2014," we read in his letter, "each council member received a list of my 2014 goals and objectives . . ." They received his goals and objectives?
Allen is sure he knows how to stop people laughing at Portsmouth because he recently was a village administrator in Delta, a small community of about three thousand people in the northeast corner of Ohio, a community, he claims, people used to laugh at until he turned it around. What is odd about his claim is that Delta had and still has a mayoral, not a city manager form of government, and what is odder still is that he was not the mayor of Delta but only the village administrator, who worked for the mayor. If there was a dramatic turnaround in Delta, shouldn't Dan. D. Miller, who was and still is mayor, get at least some of the credit? But credit for what? I have made a cursory examination of the per capita income and population data for Delta and it does not appear that any dramatic turnaround has taken place in the last five years or so. The most newsworthy thing that's happened in Delta in the last year was the breakup of a big cockfighting ring that was operating in the area. As many as fifty people were arrested and as many as seventy roosters were confiscated. It was a big story in Fulton County. Google "Delta and cockfighting" and see for yourself. I suspect that the turnaround that Allen allegedly single-handedly brought about in Delta may be a cock-and-bull story.
I predicted when the city manager form of government was proposed several years ago that it would not, because it could not, succeed. But I did not think it would implode so fast. I think Allen's days (including as many extemporaneous vacation days he can squeeze in) are numbered, and no matter the circumstances under which he leaves, it is going to cost the city money that it cannot afford, anymore than it could afford to expend the money it did for the costly job search that led to Allen's hiring, and for that we have our officious, underhanded First Ward councilman Kevin W. Johnson to thank. Johnson is the begetter of the cockamamie idea of returning to the city manager form of government that proved such a failure in the past.
Allen was not very open in his Open Letter about his experience as the Assistant City Manager in Pequa, Ohio, where he was fired, arrested, convicted, fined, and given a suspended 90-day suspended jail sentence for dereliction of duty in public office. Allen had problems in other jobs, but Portsmouth residents were kept in the dark about them by the city council and by the underhanded chair of the search committee, Kevin W. Johnson. My recollection is that we learned only after he was hired that Allen had a criminal record. Johnson was like the crooked conductor who doesn't announce the true destination of the train until after it has left the station. In reverting to the city manager form of government, as I pointed out in an earlier post (see "The Crooked Conductor" below), we are historically going in the wrong direction. According to a relatively recent scholarly study of the subject, cited in that post, the misnamed city manager system is giving up the ghost. If Johnson is the crooked conductor in my train metaphor, Allen is the fast and loose engineer who writes five-page cock-and-bull open letters when he should have both hands on the throttle.
Appendix A
Barry Feldman (click here)
Gerlach Against City Manager (click here)
City Manager: Repeating the Same Mistake (click here)
Vote No on City Manager (click here)
City Manager Search (click here)
Snuffy Smith on City Manager (click here)
Kevin W. Johnson: The Crooked Conductor (click here)
City Manager Valentine (click here)
Kalb: The Dopiest Councilman of All (click here)
Appendix B
The city manager form of government is a misleading misnomer; it should be called the city council form of government. But Allen appears to think that as city manager he has quite a bit of power. As he writes in his Open Letter, "I stated that there was a methodical plan to be installed and that I knew the steps to ensure success. I intended to implement changes to turn Portsmouth around and cease people laughing at this community." One of the steps that would "cease people laughing" at Portsmouth was having a city manager form of government and hiring a leader like himself to be city manager. "The city," he wrote, "had no other choice but to turn the operations over to a professional [himself] in order to reverse the present course or face failure and financial collapse." Instead of being the servant of the city council, he often sounds in his letter like its master. "On February 4, 2014," we read in his letter, "each council member received a list of my 2014 goals and objectives . . ." They received his goals and objectives?
Allen is sure he knows how to stop people laughing at Portsmouth because he recently was a village administrator in Delta, a small community of about three thousand people in the northeast corner of Ohio, a community, he claims, people used to laugh at until he turned it around. What is odd about his claim is that Delta had and still has a mayoral, not a city manager form of government, and what is odder still is that he was not the mayor of Delta but only the village administrator, who worked for the mayor. If there was a dramatic turnaround in Delta, shouldn't Dan. D. Miller, who was and still is mayor, get at least some of the credit? But credit for what? I have made a cursory examination of the per capita income and population data for Delta and it does not appear that any dramatic turnaround has taken place in the last five years or so. The most newsworthy thing that's happened in Delta in the last year was the breakup of a big cockfighting ring that was operating in the area. As many as fifty people were arrested and as many as seventy roosters were confiscated. It was a big story in Fulton County. Google "Delta and cockfighting" and see for yourself. I suspect that the turnaround that Allen allegedly single-handedly brought about in Delta may be a cock-and-bull story.
I predicted when the city manager form of government was proposed several years ago that it would not, because it could not, succeed. But I did not think it would implode so fast. I think Allen's days (including as many extemporaneous vacation days he can squeeze in) are numbered, and no matter the circumstances under which he leaves, it is going to cost the city money that it cannot afford, anymore than it could afford to expend the money it did for the costly job search that led to Allen's hiring, and for that we have our officious, underhanded First Ward councilman Kevin W. Johnson to thank. Johnson is the begetter of the cockamamie idea of returning to the city manager form of government that proved such a failure in the past.
Allen was not very open in his Open Letter about his experience as the Assistant City Manager in Pequa, Ohio, where he was fired, arrested, convicted, fined, and given a suspended 90-day suspended jail sentence for dereliction of duty in public office. Allen had problems in other jobs, but Portsmouth residents were kept in the dark about them by the city council and by the underhanded chair of the search committee, Kevin W. Johnson. My recollection is that we learned only after he was hired that Allen had a criminal record. Johnson was like the crooked conductor who doesn't announce the true destination of the train until after it has left the station. In reverting to the city manager form of government, as I pointed out in an earlier post (see "The Crooked Conductor" below), we are historically going in the wrong direction. According to a relatively recent scholarly study of the subject, cited in that post, the misnamed city manager system is giving up the ghost. If Johnson is the crooked conductor in my train metaphor, Allen is the fast and loose engineer who writes five-page cock-and-bull open letters when he should have both hands on the throttle.
Kevin W. Johnson says, "All aboard!"
Appendix A
Previous River Vices posts on the subject of city manager
Barry Feldman (click here)
Gerlach Against City Manager (click here)
City Manager: Repeating the Same Mistake (click here)
Vote No on City Manager (click here)
City Manager Search (click here)
Snuffy Smith on City Manager (click here)
Kevin W. Johnson: The Crooked Conductor (click here)
City Manager Valentine (click here)
Kalb: The Dopiest Councilman of All (click here)
Appendix B
Allen's Open Letter to Portsmouth City Council
