Stop, Drop and Roll

30 July 2007 | Alameda City Council, Alameda Truthiness, Transportation Commission | John Knox White

In May, the City Council met in joint session with the City’s Transportation Commission (TC) to discuss the past and future direction of the commission’s work. At the meeting, the Council made clear their appreciation of the work of the commission (he types proudly) and the talk turned to Agenda Item #1a: “Role of the Transportation Commission.”

{Boring background} This item was placed on the agenda to help clarify some points of confusion that had arisen over the years between the city staff’s perception of what the commission should work on and what the council continued to ask the commission to work on. Honestly, I think that most of the issues had been worked out verbally in meetings with staff, commissioners, and councilmembers, but there remained the need to clarify this understanding in the City’s municipal code, so that staff changes, etc. wouldn’t cause confusion in the future. Issues included whether the Transportation Commission should be reviewing and sending comments/recommendation’s to the City Council on large projects like the Alameda Towne Centre renovation or Alameda Point. The council said “yes,” but our previous city manager felt “no.” Unfortunately, the municipal code was vague and everybody was right.

{More boring background} At the time of the creation of the Transportation Commission, staff recommended a newfangled set-up, whereby two bodies would be created, a staff committee (TTT) and a citizen’s committee (TC). Unlike other departments, many Public Works issues would be made at night-time public meetings (TTT). These issues could be appealed to the TC, and the TC decision could be appealed to the Council.

A year or so later, this process was changed by the TC & Council in order cut down on the number of meetings that residents needed to attend. (see bus lines moving from San Jose to Encinal, Fall ‘02/Spring ’03).

As time went on, staff decided that the TTT didn’t make a lot of sense and they raised this issue with the council at the TC/CC meeting on May 7 and the council agreed. At that meeting, the Council asked staff to bring their recommendations first to the TC for comment and then to the council.

Which is a long winded way of bringing us to today’s post.

Last Wednesday the staff recommendation was brought to the TC (oops, correction, my TC). Days beforehand, the following post appeared on the Don-Roberts-blog-for-vitriol-and-complaining:

“John Knox White’s Transportation Commission is attempting to amend the City Ordinances to usurp the authority of the Council to hear appeals on the following items and require that the Transportation Commission will be the body to hear appeals on those items…. In other words, appeal decisions on those items will be made by non-elected members of the Transportation Commission instead of by elected members of the City Council as currently required.”

If you want to make a fun game of it, you can read through that sentence and find the multiple incorrect statements. The answers are:

1) It was the staff, not the TC that was recommending the change.

2) It’s hard for the TC to “usurp” power when the supposed usurpee (the council) asked for the item to come to them.

3) It doesn’t mention that this change is due to a realignment of the TTT to bring the staff/commission roles into line with the other commissions in town.

4) The TC will not be the final appeal body; the council will retain that role.

It’s hard to see how the Don came to this bad information, as all the info he needed to get it right was in the packet.

For example, page two of the report reads (in BULLET FORM, FOR CRYING OUT LOUD!):

“If operational decisions by the Public Works Director are appealed, such appeals will be reviewed by the TC. Appeals of such TC decisions will be heard by the City Council. “

Nobody reading this bullet point (one of only four) could assume that the council was being cut out of the process. The report is equally clear about the fact that the council has given input on these issues and that this isn’t an exclusively staff—or TC—driven process.

The Don’s confusion could only mean that he skipped the two-page report and read only “Table 1” on page 3. The table outlnes staff’s proposal that certain items now be appealed to the TC because most TTT decisions will be made by the Public Works Director; What it doesn’t say, (and one would be excused for thinking it didn’t have to since all the details are spelled out in the preceding report), is that the TC’s decision on any appeal can be appealed to the city council. Only people who jumped to the chart and assumed that the two pages of writing before it contained no information would assume that the chart provided a complete picture. I think these are the hallmarks of study habits that produce D’s and F’s in school.

All this said, this wouldn’t have been worth my time writing about it if it weren’t for what happened next, I mean, honestly, it’s no longer news when the Don-Roberts-blog-for-vitriol-and-complaining gets fundamental facts wrong.

On the Thursday that followed the meeting, in the “late-breaking news” style that Don likes to employ in order to make it seem like he’s providing actual news instead of pure unfiltered venom, he wrote:

“At last night’s meeting, Alameda’s Transportation Commission accepted staff’s recommendations <em>{ed – notice they now acknowledge staff as the progenitor}</em> and voted to recommend that the City Council should increase the Commission’s authority by allowing the Commission to hear appeals challenging decisions made by the Public Works Director. Although the table below, which was in the staff prepared packet for the meeting, indicates that proposed change for traffic operations is to make the Transportation Commission the appeal body for challenges of certain decisions by the Public Works Director, Matt Naclerio, Public Works Director, said the chart was in error as it did not state that appeal decisions by the Transportation Commission may still be appealed further to the City Council by anyone willing to pay a $100.00 fee to make such an appeal. Naclerio apologized for the error in the chart and said he accepted full responsibility for the incomplete information in the chart.”

Reading this, my first question was, Why is Matt Naclerio apologizing for a report that’s accurate? Isn’t he apologizing for someone else’s inability to read material thoroughly? I mean, there were three pages in total! Including the chart! This wasn’t a 300 page document that someone was trying to understand after just a quick review.

But what really struck me was the inability of the crack journalists at the Don-Roberts-blog-for-vitriol-and-complaining to admit that they got the item wrong and just correct it. They may have concerns. However, instead of saying “we had thought this said ’X’ it doesn’t, and we apologize, we are stilled concerned because of ’Y’,” they call the Public Works Director and get him to apologize for not writing staff reports to be read at a first-grade level.

Literally, like people just learning to read, they read the report by skipping ahead to the pictures and developing their own narrative based on what they were hoping it was about. They crafted it to their own slanted view of particular personalities and personal agendas (we all have them, they are called opinions).

Instead of reading the 750 words in the report, they chose to misrepresent an important issue, and once they realized how wrong they were, they asked a dedicated city employee to admit wrongdoing and apologize. There’s an admittedly gender-biased saying “It takes a big man to admit his mistakes.” Behavior like this indicates that the Don-Roberts-blog-for-vitriol-and-complaining isn’t comprised of one of them..

Alphabet Soup Glossary:

CC = City Council

TC = Transportation Commission

TTT = Transportation Technical Team