Protocols, Rules, and MORE PROCESS

I was listening to the Bears game last night and hearing about the new line coach talking about what it takes be a great line man. One must keep the eye on the ball and get it done..... don't get side tracked. The reason they are playing for the team is that the coaches believe that they are good line man, can accomplish the team goals, and have great instincts to achieve success.

How I relate this to being a Councilman is that the citizens have elected me to be one of those to help direct policy for the City of Highland Park because they think I am good at what I do. As Councilman, we need direct contact with the issue at hand and be able to motivate, be creative, give suggestions, and in general be involved with the process of government to get complex issues moved forward. A maze of staff rules and protocols that restricts our public servants can cause disengagement and failure on promoting positive outcomes. All of our best minds and strongest spirits within community government can achieve cutting edge results for our community. As long as we all operate together and promote outcomes that are in compliance to the City Councils consensus, all is good.

Since 2004 our City Manager has been laying down many processes, protocols, rules, controls on the Council and Commissions, and a tight bandwidth of staff to get the results that he approves. This micro management has limited the effectiveness of the Mayor and City Council, our Commissions, and the over all creativity of the staff.

The opinion of staff in our Council Managerial government is that once the Council develops policy and give direction, get out of the process until staff is ready to ask us for our judgement on the final result. If we are lucky we might get an status update. Now to be fair, I know that Councilwoman Olian and myself have pushed ourselves into several situations where we have been allowed to be operatives on a Council policy and I am eternally grateful to our City Manager. But this should not be the exception to how things work at city hall.

I believe the City Manager has done an excellent job on segregating the "Policy Team of Council and Commissions" and the "Action Team of the staff". All I am saying is this needs to stop and be reversed! We must all be in the same locker room, same team, and get the job done together.