It would be a tough call which of two government board “retreats” this week was the more juvenile or sophomoric – to say nothing of disingenuous, even deceptive.
There was plenty of room for ridicule when Graham’s five city council members met for over seven hours on Tuesday – hiding out at the Alamance County Board of Elections conference room.
The tyranny of so-called experts was also on full display when four of five of Alamance County’s commissioners convened their own annual “retreat” at the Graham Public Library.
Unlike previous, staff-driven retreats, the commissioners delegated the conduct of this two-day affair to a pair of professional facilitators from the North Carolina Association of County Commissioners.
Neil Emory and his associate Amy Cannon ultimately descended on Alamance County with a satchel of worn-out platitudes about “teamwork” and “mutual respect.” They also dispensed unsolicited advice that would’ve seemed patronizing if addressed to an elementary school classroom, much less a group of duly-elected officials.
“You don’t want to become an island on the board,” Emory said in one particularly galling example; “The hardest thing you are going to need to learn is to count to three [apparently referring to the three of five votes needed for a majority].”
Emory and his sidekick went on to advise the commissioners to be mindful of the potentially intimidating effect they may have on some county staff members and avoid dropping in on staff-level meetings where their mere presence could stifle discussion.
He also encouraged the commissioners to share information with each other so that there are “no surprises” among fellow board members.
In all this, he made no mention of the board’s obligations to the public and, instead, promoted a clubby mentality that all too often leads to secretive, backchannel discussions.
Interestingly both boards somehow felt it was necessary to go somewhere else (besides their regular meeting chambers) for these shindigs. Doing so apparently offers them the advantage (to their way of thinking) of avoiding public scrutiny – both from in-person audiences and viewers, since neither of these venues had live-streaming capability as has otherwise become customary for ostensibly public meetings.
One of Graham’s councilmen, Jim Young, set up video-recording equipment to record the day’s proceedings, which will be posted on the city’s website at some point. Likewise, the county’s IT staff had a camcorder running to create an after-the-fact record that may eventually show up online.
For those who suffer from insomnia, we highly recommend the Graham video when it becomes available; we’re only surprised that the council members who experienced it in person managed to stay awake to endure the banalities so frequently voiced throughout the day.
We find the “team-building” exercises that pervaded both retreats to be a rather frivolous exercise in the first place. We’ve never been keen on their effectiveness or usefulness in the private sector (among companies or nonprofit organizations), either, but the problems and deficiencies are magnified for an elected board inasmuch as they demonstrate a careless waste of precious tax dollars (in Graham’s case) – in addition to being a colossal waste of time.
“Facilitators” don’t come cheap – at least Graham’s didn’t. Graham paid Rebecca Jackson of the True North Performance Group $7,500 – that’s roughly $1,000 per hour – to narrate their retreat.
For all of their faults, the county’s facilitators did have one thing going for them – as county manager Heidi York revealed in a subsequent conversation with The Alamance News.
“We didn’t have to pay them anything,” she told a reporter after the retreat came to an end. “If we did, we wouldn’t have had them.”
Would that Graham had employed a similarly thrifty philosophy.
And we might add that these little brainstorming “retreat” sessions are usually little more that an attempt to distract and divert elected officials from far more important, substantive considerations.
Voters don’t expect chummy, clubby member relationships
First, it should be noted that members of elected boards and councils aren’t necessarily meant to “get along” or even like one another, although that seemed to be the underlying presumption of the “facilitators” at each board’s retreat.
The voters of Graham and Alamance County, respectively, have chosen their representatives, and they didn’t necessarily pick them because they wanted them to get along – or care very much whether they do.
Usually, voters cast their ballots for particular candidates because they at least thought the people they elected would vote according to a set of principles or specific issues on which they campaigned. That presumption may be misplaced, but, historically, that’s what elections have been about.
Both of these retreats were full of vapid, nonsensical, even patronizing, exercises designed to strip the elected officials of their independence, individuality, and principles in favor of pressuring them to “get along” – both one another and even more so with government bureaucrats who work for them.
Indeed, in both cases, the underlying theme seemed to be “trust your bureaucrats” (our words and description, not theirs). Each board was told, often in a rather juvenile, condescending fashion: funnel all of your concerns (and those passed along to you by your constituents) through the city manager/county manager.
Two concepts that seem to be foreign to such vision, strategy, or goal-setting exercises: taxpayers and saving money.
At Graham’s meeting, not one solitary “idea” expounded during the day was aimed at cutting expenses or frivolous, bloated spending. Rather, almost every suggestion was on how to spend more of the taxpayers’ dollars – on yet more plans, more employees (and higher pay for those already in the jurisdiction’s employ), more programs, more projects – always more, more, more, all of which will almost inevitably lead to tax increases for the city’s taxpayers.
Council amnesia about “staying in their lane”
One of the most hilarious examples of the inanities at the Graham retreat was the consultant’s serious and repeated admonition that council members need to “stay in their lane” as an elected body, leaving the day-to-day administration of the municipality to the city manager, who oversees the city’s staff.
Two of the council members who claimed to embrace that concept this week seemed to suffer from amnesia regarding their advocacy and actions violating that principle just last year.
Last year, Bobby Chin and Bonnie Whitaker were at the forefront (along with then-mayor Jennifer Talley) in telling the city manager what criteria she should use in hiring a new police chief (i.e., that she should hire from within by promoting someone already in the department). The manager didn’t comply with their preferences, making an excellent “outside” hire, who’s off to an impressive start.
Another ironic twist was the supposed, but empty, commitment to the council’s supposed desire for “engaging with the public” and “getting public feedback.”
Yeah, right. This was just one week after four members of the council (Chin, Whitaker, Ricky Hall, and Jim Young) rammed through a vote on a new proposal (unveiled the same night it passed) to move the Sesquicentennial Park – without seeking, or in most cases, even allowing, the public to see the plans or comment on them.
We’re not surprised that the public increasingly stays away from Graham council meetings; what good does it do to voice an opinion, when the council apparently will do what it wants, ambushing the public whenever it pleases a majority of them?
Oh, another one of Graham’s plights: its citizens just don’t appreciate what a “good job” the council is doing on their behalf, whined Whitaker during the retreat. Last year the council added funding to hire a propagandist – formally listed as a “public information officer.” Whitaker wants her to get busy and “tell the city’s story” – at least the version Whitaker wants the public to hear.
We’ve noticed a familiar pattern with these consultant-facilitators. They always seem to be retired former bureaucrats, more than willing (usually for a price) to bring their favorite illustrations of “good governance” to these so-called retreats – almost always emphasizing a reliance on professional bureaucrats over the people’s elected representatives.
It’s no wonder that taxpayers have become increasingly cynical about those who purport to represent them.
