Rob Lindquist, San Juan Capistrano
I read with interest the article on the new City Council voting 4-1, with Sam Allevato dissenting, to hire a consultant to conduct a workshop “to aid in the selection of a new city manager.” This consultant will be in addition to the search firm, Ralph Anderson and Associates, already hired and paid for by the city. According to the article, the four council members chose the most expensive consulting firm (measured either by hourly rate or total hours billed). The article noted that the winning firm is headed by an apparent political ally of our current mayor. Putting aside the issue of why the council needs to pay good money in the first place for a workshop to help it with a selection process for which it is already paying a search firm, why do our hard-earned tax dollars have to go the highest bidder and not one of the lower two bidders? Is Mayor Derek Reeve’s political ally that much more qualified than the others?
One suspects that the current council majority may be of the camp that views our current president as a free-spending Marxist socialist who flouts the democratic process. However, when you look at the current council majority’s actions (such as suppressing the rights of property owners to develop their own property in the case of the Laguna Glen and Urban Village projects and selecting John Perry to replace Roy Byrnes because of his political reliability rather than choosing one of the top vote-getters in the most recent election) President Obama actually comes across as a tight-fisted libertarian in comparison. Go figure.
Discussion about this post