The design of our strong mayor/council structure is purposefully set up to generate debate and arm-wrestling regarding significant segments of responsibility and duties within the city government.
Those living with an Oprah Winfrey mindset would have all of us up here holding hands, smiling at each other only ever complimenting each other on what a good job we are all doing. This is not reality.
In fact, I don’t think the public would really want each branch of their city government drinking from the same straw.
Debate and openly discussing differing viewpoints on an issue will generally lead government to the best result for the common good.
However, there is another extreme in running government that is just as damaging as the council and mayor having a love-fest each Tuesday at our council meetings.
This extreme in governance is done by shutting down communication between the mayor and the council or individual councilmembers---holding the other person or other side in contempt over every issue—and then purposefully stopping communication and/or spreading your contempt to other councilmembers or to the public.
The only tool we have to work out the best decisions in government is through Communication.
I hope that no one in either branch believes he or she has a monopoly on what is truth, justice, or what is best for Ogden.
High quality Communication will lead to Quality legislation.
I have heard some individuals treat inter-governmental communication between the mayor and councilmembers as if it were not allowed and have actually avoided it.
Some have even acted afraid of such communication, in my opinion.
Working in government isn’t supposed to be easy. We don’t and shouldn’t have to make our jobs to tackle the easy decisions as if we were in a club deciding on the table patterns for the next Holiday Social.
Our council should make it our business to always be swimming in the deep water of Ogden issues.
We should make it our business to be involved in the toughest, most important decisions we can find that will make a difference for our city in the long-run.
If our decisions are not regularly tough, ugly, and/or risky, we are wasting our time and our constituents’ time.
They did not elect us to offer endless resolutions, platitudes, or pointless speeches, or to put off important decisions until the next group of council members that replace us.
We should have to debate, support and substantiate why we make the decisions we do—which leads me to my “No” vote today.
My “no” vote relates to the fact that some of our councilmembers, including some in leadership, (with the exception of a very small number of scheduled group leadership meetings that happened to be held in the mayor’s office), have never actually set foot in the mayor’s office, telephoned, or e-mailed the mayor in the last year, despite invitations to do so.
How were they thinking they were going to communicate, debate, reach any mutual understanding, or development any kind of relationship in the spirit of good government if individual communication is not sought out?
How is trust fostered with a dysfunctional relationship containing absolutely no direct interface?
As councilmembers, we should want to pester the mayor with ideas, solutions, concerns, disagreements, good news, bad news, or request help regarding issues within the city, neighborhoods, or municipal wards. (and visa versa, by the way…)
It takes 2 to Tango. Sometimes the type of outreach I am talking about fails because the other is not willing to reciprocate.
However, as a member of the Ogden City Council, I expect our leadership and hope each member of the council always make the outreach first and always offers a way for the inter-governmental relationship to be productive.
I call on our new leadership and mayor in the appropriate venues and times, to communicate, discuss, debate, negotiate, learn, give and take information, and work to actually make this form of government work the way it is supposed to in order to generate the understanding and trust between the branches that will give Ogden the governing it deserves.
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