CC Min 1998-02-02 - Laserfiche WebLink

Browse Search

disturbing to my own family, half of whom are Latinos, that I did not appreciate. This Council is criticized for even bringing this subject up. I brought this subject up on the 5th of January because I didn't want a three-ring circus at that Council meeting. I have gone through this many times, in many other situations, and I've watched oral input drag on for 2.5 hours on hot subjects. I wanted to move this off the ITont burner, get it out of the media blitz that was coming, and move it to tonight, so that we would have an opportunity to hear from our Chief and hear about his performance evaluation system. That was my motivation. For those of you in the audience or in the community who think my motivation was anything other than that, you are terribly wrong. I did this to help the process, to help get communications out in the community, and defuse what I feared would get the media blitz. It has turned out to be a PR disaster. We are all over the radio and talk shows. We are all over the newspapers. If we had information to begin with, we could have answered the questions that we have been asked by our public. I personally received more phone calls, more letters and more eyeball to eyeball contact with citizens about this one issue than any other I can remember in my short time on this Council. If! had had this report tonight I could have addressed all of those issues very, very well. But I brought this issue tonight to bring it out in the open. I brought it to tonight so that the Chief would have an opportunity to address it in public, and in fact, tell the public what it really meant. I think the Chief did an excellent job doing that. I want to talk a few minutes about standards. For those of you who do not know my background, Councilman Ira was a student of mine. I live and breathe standards. I was a Cost Accounting Manager for Raychem, a Controller for National Semiconductor, a Corporate Controller for Farex, and a Corporate Controller for a company called Marconik... In those capacities it was my job to install standards. I am a standards person.... When you install standard cost systems, we look at things like labor usage or labor rate variances, materials uses variances and right down the line. Those things I did for a living. Standards can be very useful in making your organization better. It is only when standards are used to do something other than make your organization better, that they are not good. We heard ITom Mr. Burdick tonight, and we have seen in the newspaper that there is a morale problem in our PD. That is the allegation. I don't know. That's up to the Manager and the Chief to figure out. Not me. That is something I can't really get involved in. But I do know that if standards are used properly, they help morale." Council Member Claire described a company he worked for that used Dr. Demming's TQM where it was a collaborative effort to set standards, and said that company worked well. He said another company used standards to fire people and that company did not work well, and that was the worst case scenario. Council Member Claire said that about one third of the people he heard at this meeting believe "our evaluation process is a quota system. I don't believe it is. But the public believes that. And I really believe that in my opinion, the City Manager has a duty to dispel that public relations problem. I think that is his responsibility. So I would like to see an effort made to take a look at the public relations problems that we are facing with this standard system, and get the word out correctly. In the final analysis I really believe in a standards system.... but I also believe that that standards system should be implemented properly and fully explained before it is implemented. And I would hope that the City Manager would do that for us." REGULAR COUNCIL MEETING MINUTE BOOK NO. 56 FEBRUARY 2, 1998 MINUTES Page No. 234 PAGE 19