No Drama, Council Gets Their Man

Mayor Joe Krovoza learned his lessons from history, back when the Council hired Jim Antonen. He said that the council made their three finalists known publicly, the top two candidates backed out and the council was forced, in a sense, to hire Jim Antonen, a move that they apparently did not want to make and did not work out.

One of the big goals, however, was to hire a city manager before the summer break.  The council will take more than a week off following next week’s traditional August 1 meeting, Mayor Pro Tem Rochelle Swanson is already on vacation and the position had been open for nearly a year. It was time.

“We sought public input but didn’t turn the process into a circus of rumors and speculation,” he told the Vanguard on Tuesday night.

And they didn’t.  When the council finally announced on Tuesday night that they had hired a city manager, few knew where the process had stood, few realized they were as closed to being ready to hire as they were.

We can debate whether this was the best process.  Would more public scrutiny have produced a better outcome?  All of that depends on what the outcome is, and we will not really know that for some time.

The city has very serious challenges ahead.  The city council recently gave the interim city manager the direction to find $2.5 million in personnel cost cuts by September 30.

Hiring the city manager now has an added benefit, as it frees up Mr. Navazio to manage the city’s finances.

The city must embark upon reorganization.  We are delighted that Steve Pinkerton has experience doing exactly that.

Pinkerton took the helm in Manteca, the city press release reports,  just as San Joaquin County was becoming the foreclosure capital of the United States.  Property values were dropping, municipal revenues were plummeting and Manteca was facing a future of annual General Fund budget deficits exceeding 35 percent of total revenues.

Three years later, through a combination of staffing consolidations, increased operational efficiencies and an aggressive economic development strategy, Manteca has adopted a balanced budget for the coming fiscal year.

At the same time, the budget is not the only crisis the city is facing.  Businesses having seen the bottom line rate increases are starting to balk at the massive five-year tripling of water rates.  The city faces a Proposition 218 challenge and there is now talk of a referendum that would put a halt, at least temporarily, to the proposed rate increases.

As we have seen repeatedly over the years, city staff needs to manage projects better.  Recently, the city council seemed to panic as the threat of RDA (Redevelopment Agency) losses loomed over them, and the city staff simply handed them the current projects without a good deal of consideration as to costs and priorities.

Worse yet, they failed to follow the direction of Mayor Joe Krovoza, and when called on it, hastily stuck an addition to the parking project staff recommendation, without alerting the public to the changes.

Is Steve Pinkerton the answer?  That is a question we cannot answer today.  We know that Mr. Pinkerton has maintained a blog in Manteca and we would encourage him to do similarly in Davis.

According to one source, the blog is rated as one of the best in the state by a city manager.  On the other hand, it is largely a collection of posted articles with few writings by Mr. Pinkerton himself, so hopefully we can encourage him to do more of this.

Clearly, he does not fear transparency and new media operations.  That is a huge plus in a city that we have often accused of doing business like it is still 1995 or 2000.

Readers were quick to find a series of comments on the Manteca Bulleton article that Mr. Pinkerton was leaving for Davis.

The article drew 36 comments, many of them rather pointed.

As one person put it, “Many of these posts are from employees and former employees that he has thrown under the bus. The City of Manteca has gone to poop since his arrival. You are right – his staff has worked their rears off for Pinkerton and you know how he rewarded them? They got to read of his departure in the newspaper.”

“How many city workers can Manteca rehire without Pinkerton ‘running’ the city? Please take all of your friends and buddies with you. That should free up a whole lot of cash to pay those whose lives you have destroyed Mr. Pinkerton,” another commenter wrote.

Still another, “Good Luck Davis…he is worthless as a city manager…hope he takes his useless friends with him”

One the other hand, others praised him, “Those of you who write comments, having never worked for or with Mr. Pinkerton, have no idea how much good he has done for Manteca. The next person who comes to work for Manteca will have it much easier thanks to Mr. Pinkerton and his staff.”

Should we be leery based on these comments?  Hard to know.  It seems likely many of these are from employees who were let go due to the need to get the budget under control.  That seems to be the underlying theme.

With a strong city council in place, I suspect we have little to worry about.  Mr. Pinkerton will find this a good but challenging environment with an engaged citizenry and publications such as the Vanguard waiting to pounce at a moment’s notice at any sign of weakness.

Mr. Pinkerton is apparently aware of the Vanguard and somewhat complimentary of it, and we will see how he views it once it criticizes him for the first time.

The council has their person to lead the city’s government, now they have to finish a lot of unfinished business between now and September 30.

—David M. Greenwald reporting