Earlier, in a post entitled, “Come On, Whitewater! Stop Disappointing Your Politicians and Bureaucrats (Part 2),” I considered some of Whitewater City Manager Brunner’s remarks on low turnout at budget listening session. The session was covered at the Daily Union, in a story entitled, “No Input at Budget Hearing.”
In this post, a few follow-up remarks.
About that headline…. The story’s headline, ‘no input at budget hearing,’ tells Brunner’s tale, that no one showed up, that implicitly, the community let him down. You didn’t offer your input, Whitewater! It’s unsurprising from the paper, and representative of its coverage.
One might have considered a different angle: “Poorly Publicized Session Draws One Person.” No, it’s not the bureaucrats and politicians who organized the event; it’s your fault. Brunner’s trying to engage “the citizens,” and they’ve spurned him.
On Efficiency. The story reports that “Brunner said the city should prioritize services, review its organization structure, share resources with neighboring jurisdictions; reallocate staff resources, reduce bureaucracy and redundancies, and evaluate outside contracts.”
Good for him. Why, though, only now? Shouldn’t Brunner have tried to prioritize, review, share, reallocate, and reduce bureaucracy, and evaluate from the moment he took office?
One might ask, why only now? One might also ask, of course, what do these proposals mean?
Too funny, too, is the notion that Brunner admits he has a bureaucracy in a town of 14,296. It’s true, he does. Some of these gentlemen live as though they’re administrators of a vast city, far from the field, unwilling to dirty their hands.
It’s a small town; they would do well to stop pretending otherwise.