Well, it was standing room only again for the new council’s first meeting. Instead of B-Y-O-Chair, it should have been B-Y-O-Cot because it was a looong meeting. In addition to the usual citizen comments and city administration reports, there were 23 agenda items from council members.
I’ve said before that I don’t often write about my little city because I live here and people get mad. Well, this is going to be one of those recaps that make people mad, I guarantee it. So I’ve put on my big boy britches and here we go.
Let’s just get this out of the way. A couple of the new council members have a burr up their butts about the old administration and can’t seem to let it go. I hope that in the future, they will set aside these petty grievances and focus on the business at hand.
After accepting the former Mayor’s resignation, discussion centered around selection of a new mayor. There was much discussion amongst the council and citizens about the best approach but in the end nothing was decided. Reviewing the agenda items, it looked like the members had already decided what to do but perhaps in the end they decided to be a bit more transparent than this:
8.2 Action to accept the resignation of Mayor Dolly Arons and declare the office of mayor vacant. [Webber]
8.3 (withdrawn) [Webber]
8.4 Consideration and discussion of method for filling the vacancy of the office of mayor (appointment or special election). [Webber]
8.5 Consideration and action to fill the office of mayor by appointment until a special or regular election is held. [Webber]
8.6 Administer Oath of Office to newly appointed mayor. [Stall]
Logic dictates that when that agenda was prepared, the council “knew” what they were going to do. But as one of the citizens said, “I sure hope this agenda doesn’t mean that you’ve already decided what to do.” They quickly backed away from appointing someone, deciding to study the issue further. So we still do not have a mayor and I wouldn’t be surprised if they chose to go the next year without one as an election is estimated to cost ten grand, money that could be used more effectively next year. Another option is to fill the post with a placeholder, someone that will not run in 2014, leaving the field open. But I think that an election is out of the question – ten grand for an election in November, to fill out the term for seven months doesn’t make fiscal sense.
After that non-decision decision, things went south quickly. One of the reasons for the council turnover was that long time Police Chief Randy French was fired. So one of the new council members, Nancy Schnell, put forward this agenda item:
8.10 Consideration and action to adopt Resolution No. 2013-110 naming the Shoreacres police station the “Randall J. French Police Station.” [Schnell]
Schnell and new council member Rick Moses both gave long, emotional speeches about why this was deserved. New member Bo Bunker and returning member Steven Jones both said that they heard from constituents that perhaps a plaque was more appropriate. Many citizens commented, including myself, with about 60{997ab4c1e65fa660c64e6dfea23d436a73c89d6254ad3ae72f887cf583448986} in favor and 40{997ab4c1e65fa660c64e6dfea23d436a73c89d6254ad3ae72f887cf583448986} preferring the plaque. Moses gave another emotional speech claiming that 98{997ab4c1e65fa660c64e6dfea23d436a73c89d6254ad3ae72f887cf583448986} of the room was in favor of naming the building after French, then said that he was there to listen to the people and the people that show up at council meetings are the citizens that need to be listened to. Bunker folded and the vote went 3-1 (could have been 4-1 if Webber voted but I didn’t see him say ‘Aye’) in favor with Jones being the dissenting voice. When Mayor Pro-Tem Webber asked him if he wanted to state why he voted against, he stated that he was simply doing what the constituents wanted him to do.
So I guess the new rule is that if you don’t go to council meetings and agree with the loudest council members, you aren’t a citizen that matters. Interesting coming from a group that ran on listening to “all” of the citizens.
Okay, with that baseline established, the meeting then turned to pure embarrassment. After a relatively short discussion of city hall hours, Moses had five straight agenda items about the police department:
8.12 Review and discussion of police department hours of operation; chief of police duty hours; and, officer duty hours and shifts. [Moses]
8.13 Review and discussion of the Chief of Police’s job functions. [Moses]
8.14 Review and discussion of the police department grants and status of pending grants. [Moses]
8.15 Review and discussion of the police department standard operating procedure. [Moses]
8.16 Review and discussion of the police department pursuit policy. [Moses]
I won’t go over each one of them but as a group, they were nothing more than a thinly disguised attack on the new police chief, David Newman. There was much back and forth with Moses, many snide remarks from Schnell, and a lot of comments from citizens.
A lot of information came out during this “interrogation”. In talks about why a warrant officer was necessary, it was disclosed that the city has about $800,000 in outstanding fines – much of that money would go to the state if collected but a significant portion would go into the city’s coffers. There seemed to be many people “shocked” that the police department’s calls are not computerized but are still slips of paper. No one that met the candidates should have been shocked by that – that very item was one of candidate Mike Clark’s reforms.
Then many people seemed appalled that the SOP’s for the department were written in 1994 and wanted to know why the new chief hadn’t updated them. Keep in mind that he has been chief for about six months – he was interim for about six months before that. Citizen Paul Croas suggested that the city contract with CALEA (Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies) to update their SOP’s. Chief Newman was open to this but noted that it was not a free service. Indeed, according to their website, the initial accreditation will run $7,125 plus an undetermined amount for an on-site visit/assessment. After that, it runs $3,470 per year to maintain accreditation. Ouch.
There was also much discussion about having two officers on duty at all times. Certainly we can do that but do we need to? There is very little crime in Shoreacres and most of it during the day because we have no businesses other than the Houston Yacht Club. During the “interrogation”, Chief Newman pointed out that the night officer sometimes goes weeks without receiving a single call. Why we would need two officers waiting for a call that never comes baffles me but the main argument was for officer safety. I understand that but it isn’t like we have officers patrolling strip clubs or nightclubs – we are a residential community. It would take hiring at least four new full time officers to make this work and as I mentioned in an earlier post, we already have the highest tax rate by far in the area.
Like I said, a lot of information came out but the irony of the interrogation was lost on the inquisitors. At one point, Moses said that he felt like the police department was going backwards because many of the answers Chief Newman gave were along the lines of “well, that’s the way we’ve done it since I started here in 2001”. The irony is that every single issue that Moses and Schnell were harping about should have been laid directly at the feet of the former police chief, the one that not 30 minutes earlier had them giving emotional speeches supporting his service. It makes my head shake.
And Moses was just plain wrong in his statement about going backward. During the “interrogation”, it was pointed out that the new chief had already begun to address many of the shortcomings that seemed to bother people, other than the shift schedule. While he was interim chief, he asked the previous council for funding to acquire and install a computerized system to track their calls. The previous council denied his request. While he was still interim, he determined that the SOP’s needed updating and started the process – the previous update done by French was in 2006 and consisted mostly of using White-out to cover up the 1994 author’s name and replace it with his own. Shortly after being named permanent chief in December, 2012, Newman contacted the Texas Department of Public Safety for their assistance in helping the city become part of the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting. In April of this year, Newman initiated contact with the Southeast Texas Crime Information Center (SETCIC) so that Shoreacres could begin using their system, allowing thousands of regional LEO’s to see warrants issued by Shoreacres.
Although it was embarrassing and totally out of line, if anything, the “interrogation” of new Chief Newman shows just how poorly run the department was on the administrative side under the old chief, the one that now has a building named after him. Unbelievable.
At that point, the meeting was already over two hours long and many agenda items remained. Unfortunately, the council chose to skip the next four items, including the one agenda item that many of us had stayed for, discussion of EMS services in the city, and moved that to the next meeting. So I chose to leave and have no idea what happened on the remaining three items, two dealing with the audit committee and one with requiring department heads to be at council meetings.
Hopefully Moses and Schnell were able to get all their emotional items out of the way and future meetings will be productive for both the city and the citizens. I’ll give them a mulligan this time, hoping that they learn to consolidate and condense their concerns. It was good to see Jones participate and hold to his conviction to do what the citizens that he talked to asked him to do, even if they couldn’t make the meeting.
Other “eyes”: Alderman Nancy Schnell’s recap of the meeting: Shoreacres City Council Report by City Council Member Nancy Schnell
Not sure who “Garrett Bryce” is but here is a report: Shoreacres City Council by Garrett Bryce