Author: citybaseblog

Rumors, Facts & Standard Setters

.Reading time 9 minutes.

Introduction

I get a lot of people telling me things here in McKinney. A few would not earn a high credibility award. But most would. However, even the most credible tip has to be treated as a rumor until I can get the facts. Most facts should be discoverable if accurate and complete minutes are taken in meetings of the City Council, Planning & Zoning and the two primary Money Boards – McKinney Economic Development Corporation (MEDC) and McKinney Community Development Corporation (MCDC).

If the meetings are videotaped, those recordings help considerably. Even a complete transcript of a meeting is missing something if you can’t see the body language and hear the tone of voice. I once wrote my city council that a particular item they were discussing the night before was revealing. The words coming out of their mouths did not match the expressions on their faces. They were tiptoeing around a subject matter and were trying too hard to say one thing without meaning another. Plus, they were being recorded, which has its good and bad aspects.

Once in an email I called out a particular council member known for his support of a particular developer. He was lazily sitting there assuming a vote for the developer was going his way. Then there were some deep questions and some tones that indicated uncertainty of the merit of the rezoning request by one, then two, then three council members. All of a sudden he sat up straight, scooted closer to the microphone and tried to formulate his thoughts to steer the discussion back for the developer. An exact transcript would have missed the comical body language.

The Weight Given To Rumors

There are times when different weights should be given to rumors. I often hear a “rumor” (my initial classification) from two or more credible sources, often over a period of a few months. Their comments seem independent, and I don’t suspect they are repeating each other’s or a third party’s rumor. I am likely to give a lot of weight to this kind of information even though I need more verification before calling it a fact.

An example is a “rumor” I heard from at least three credible people that the City’s responses to Open Records Requests (ORR) were being filtered by someone. That’s pretty serious and even gets into the realm of tampering with official government documents to my way of thinking. The weight I was giving to that “rumor” jumped 10x when I made one ORR asking for a document I heard existed. It was about an inappropriate urging from an MEDC Board Member to consider selling a piece of property to one of his bank clients. My ORR included a date range. I received about 300 pages of email copies, but the ORR response did not have what I was looking to find. So I asked again if the City was sure about their search. Then I got another 90 pages of emails. Still not there. Finally, I asked my source for the specific date and subject line and amended my ORR. Surprise! I got it. So then I asked the City for the query code for all three searches. I could not see where the first search query did not find the document.

To this day, I want to think the City was honest in its efforts even though they fell on their sword saying they could not explain the missed search. But do you see how one can start giving weight to “rumors” from multiple, credible people when you place a rumor in the context of an actual personal experience?

Perception.

I will be talking a lot about the importance of perception in my blogs. In many professions, we learn as students and then into practice that perception is given the same weight as fact. In public service, perception may even be greater than reality. I will be so bold as to say it doesn’t matter if you are fair and independent if you are not perceived as being so. What do we do about this dilemma? Mainly, we go out of your way to be both fair and independent AND to be perceived as fair and independent.

I mention this now even though my topic is about rumors and facts. These topics are intertwined with related subjects such as perception, ethics, transparency, intellectual honesty and a host of other words that define us as individual and organizations.

Tolerance & Passive Approval

You might be asking yourself why I haven’t taken my concerns to city officials. I have. I have met with the Mayor and Interim City Manager on numerous occasions to discuss many of these topics about which I am writing. I did not like the responses. Many of the responses were excuses for the bad behavior of others. Some were that procedures are now in place to prevent something from happening again. Those are appreciated. Some responses were agreements that things need changed or that they were being addressed privately. I hope so.

But I wonder. The McKinney culture is to be tolerant. At least until faced with a complaint. Some tolerance is expected and necessary. Yet tolerance often ends up setting a low standard. It is always easy to reach a low bar. Tolerance and even non-confrontational demeanor often translate into passive approval. Over time, nobody even knows they are doing something questionable.

The Need for Standard Setters

We are a few short months away from getting a new city manager in McKinney. We are about a year away from getting a new mayor and more new council members. We need some new standard setters. We need leaders who will call out bad behavior and communicate a lack of tolerance for anything less than the highest ethical standards. If leaders lead and set standards, then a code of conduct or a code of ethics in written form is unnecessary. It should exude from the leaders. It should be in their DNA.

It starts with the Mayor. We need a mayor who will not place being friends with everybody ahead of being a leader. I have told both the Mayor and Interim City Manager that I am offended that I’ve got to be the one to spend my time digging into rumors to prove they are facts already known – or should already be known by them. We have some smart people here in McKinney, citizens and those on the Council, Boards and Commissions. I simply don’t understand why they aren’t motivated to change the culture, to raise the standards AND to confront the issues that allow true transparency to thrive? LFM

Dear City Council: Please Move McKinney Money Board Meetings to the Council Chambers & Video Tape Them

.Reading time 8 minutes.

Sent August 20, 2015
Updated March 8, 2016

Dear City Council Members:

I think you made a terrific move Tuesday night (August 18) by changing the McKinney Economic Development Corporation and McKinney Community Development Corporation (MEDC/MCDC) by-laws to place more oversight and control under the City Manager. You are heading in the right direction, and I am very appreciative of this action.

There are some other moves that I request the council to consider in view of your stated commitment to open government and transparency.

The first is to require all MEDC and MCDC meetings to be held in council chambers. The creation and design of the council chambers to convey openness is not by accident. It would convey a willingness for citizens to better understand and question where $20 million is spent each and every year. Even for people not attending the MEDC/MCDC meetings, a trip to pay their utility bill would allow them to see the business of McKinney being conducted and easily step in to listen to the content. It is no secret that being in a separate building, a bank/business building, is less inviting than being inside the seat of government owned by the citizens of McKinney. Please consider moving the MEDC/MCDC meetings to council chambers as soon as possible. Surely you appreciate the distinction of being in city hall versus a bank building several miles away. Or is the location away from city hall by design?

Related, I would ask that have the MEDC/MCDC meetings held in council chambers to be video and audio recorded. The cost should be minimal since the camera and recording system is in place. And anybody giving away $20 million annually can surely afford the incremental cost. This would allow everybody, including the council members themselves, to review a recording of a meeting they could not attend. I place the recording of the MEDC/MCDC meetings on the same level of importance as moving those meetings to the council chambers. Put bluntly, the standards of recording and proper minutes set for the City Council and P&Z Commission are not applied to these two Money Boards.

Again, related, all council meetings, MEDC meetings and MCDC meetings (as well as P&Z and others) are required by the Open Meetings Act to publicly announce a final action, decision, or vote on a matter deliberated in a closed meeting. I’m not an attorney but part of the TML workshop on this subject covers the requirement to explain how councils and boards arrived at a decision – irrespective of a topic in open session or closed session.

An Example: Servergy – The Company Connected to Ken Paxton Investigation

But let’s talk about practical steps that coincide with your pledges to open government and transparency.

I often find it very difficult to understand how the council and boards arrive at their decisions. The original Servergy contract might have been properly done in a closed session when the project was being considered. However, once decided, what was the rationale for the award? That should be a public explanation. Further, are the progress reports on approved projects done in public session or closed session? What would be the justification for a closed session unless you were considering a lawsuit? When Servergy applied for a second $50,000 extension, the decision was made in executive session. Why? When the votes were taken, there is no record of the rationale. In fact, there is no record of any discussion that I can find.

When the council is presented a zoning case by the staff with a staff recommendation, a motion to go with the staff recommendation may not need any additional discussion. The capable staff has provided the background and reasoning. However, if there is no discussion, a motion is made and the vote is 5-2 or 2-5 (for instance), there is an implied obligation (forget the legal obligation) to explain to the public how the body deliberated (a critical missing element) and arrived at the decision. To do otherwise would suggest the body read each others’ minds or met secretly (including a walking quorum) to be in a position to properly vote.

You, Council, Need to Set the Standard

Therefore, I would request that the council do a good job and set the standard for all boards to document their decisions and votes. A good deliberation (facts, findings, conclusions) recorded with votes is the quintessence of open government.

I would like to point out one other sign of a lack of transparency. There is an agenda item on the special meeting called for next Monday night (August 24) when you are to consider appointments to boards and commissions. But as I understand it, the names can come in as late as Monday at noon. And the meeting does not provide for comments on the candidates. Nor is there sufficient time anyway. Why would you claim transparency and then have it so nobody even sees the candidates nor can they make comments before the decision has been made? That’s flat weird!

It is my request that you publicly make available all of the names being considered by the time of the meeting, take any other suggestions for candidates at the meeting the council may suggest, and then close the opportunity for any names to be suggested. THEN do not make a decision until your next meeting so the public can see the list and make comments to you. How could you possibly argue with taking this public disclosure step before appointing even these two boards controlling $20 million per year?

My last request is that you require all candidates for boards and commissions, as well as the sitting boards and commissions, file Financial Disclosure Reports. Surely I don’t have to explain the reason for my request.

Thank you for considering these items.

Lewis F. McLain, Jr.

BTW, It’s March 8, 2016, and I cannot find where you have considered my request to live out your campaign pledges. MEDC/MCDC will be the topic of several of my blogs since I don’t see sufficient scrutiny of $20 million per year you apply to other parts of the budget.

Lifelong Learning

.Reading time 10 minutes.

Welcome to my blog site at http://www.citybaseblog.net. It is still a work in progress. I will be tweaking the site for some time since I’m still learning about features. However, I am settled on the general design and colors for the time being. The photo carousel is something I’m just playing with in an effort to add something that might give some visuals to make us think. Maybe even amuse us.

Introduction

I have a great interest in lifelong learning. There are several reasons for my fascination. I was born in August exactly two years after the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima from the Enola Gay. That early August birth meant an unfortunate thing happened to me regarding education. I started to school three weeks after I turned six-years-old with no kindergarten back then. For my entire life (well at least into my 20s or 30s), I have sensed I was always a year behind. Being a lazy student didn’t help. I got out of high school ill-equipped for college. And I proved it that first semester.

Actually, I did not start studying seriously until I got out of college. My accounting degree afforded me some wonderful technical skills for which I will forever be grateful, although the course work was hard for me. My passion was actually cost accounting and budgeting that caught my imagination. However, college had things reversed for me. The first two years of liberal arts should have been at the end for me. I managed to get out of college without being able to write a decent memo. And I proved it my first year or two in the workplace.

Then I got in the groove of things, forcing myself to write something semi-intelligent every day. It was also the first few years out of college before I really started acquiring an interest in history, economics and literature. Regarding writing and finding a voice, that came exactly when the microcomputer and word processing arrived on the scene. As it turns out, I was horrible writing on a yellow pad. If someone had asked me to name the most valuable course in college, I would have answered that it was actually in high school: Typing 101, way before Keyboarding amped up the skill. Then thinking was the surprise benefit of writing.

I’m still a year behind or at least that is the way my psyche works. And I’m in a hurry to learn. I love numbers, I love pictures, and I love words. Fortunately the number of opportunities to continue an education are endless. I want to tell you about a recent tool I discovered.

Lynda.com

I must confess that classroom training is not my best learning environment. While not bad, there are too many distractions, usually the students in the classroom either ahead or behind me. My attention span has never been excellent and may be getting worse. But that’s my fault, not so much the classroom. I do need the visuals, and I do need the voice for emphasis. But I also need the pause. I digest information at differing paces.

I have found the perfect tool for me is on Lynda.com. Even though I’m prepared to pitch hard, I am not compensated in any way. Here is what I found. There are over 3,000 videos on a huge library of topics found at this site. Unlike the well-meaning homemade and untested YouTube videos of poor audio and video quality I have tried, these are high definition videos. They are from a few minutes to several hours in length. However, the videos are broken down into segments of about 5 minutes each on the average.

For me, the price of education and skill-building training is reasonable if I can have it handy any time I want to have a spoonful or a full meal of it. That means it must be on my iPhone or iPad. Due to my eyesight (cataract surgery coming up in two weeks!), I prefer the ability to set the lighting and font size to my liking. Therefore, I elected to take the more expensive (but still cheap) option of being able to download many hours of videos on my iPad, so I could get an orientation into blog site and Photoshop tools while on our cruise last week.

I logged about 20 hours in my technical education last week. Twenty delightful hours. With my headphones on to minimize distractions and while my wife was reading, I immersed myself in several high quality videos from Lynda.com. One course was over five hours long. The time flew by, and my attention span was at the highest ever. Irrespective of the subject matter, these videos are lessons on how to teach, present technical information and how to stay at the right level of details. There are skillfully placed reviews and natural pause points to digest before continuing on. And, of course, it was easy to rewind and replay any segment I wanted.

Keeping The Mind Sharp

I have a friend from junior high days, Steve, who lives in Houston. We text and email back and forth on a regular basis. Often several times each day. We discuss a wide range of topics. Steve is much more of a historian than I am. My technical skill set is perhaps stronger, but we seem to complement each other and can carry on a conversation for long periods of time. All full of humor, too.

Since we are both in our late sixties, we revisit the topic of keeping our minds active on a regular basis. It is clear that staying interested in a variety of topics is critical. But the requirement to push ourselves to learn and to think has never been more important. We live in such a bizarre world that making sense of it gets more complex each day. So, reaching the top of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is partly to expand ourselves, but so is the appreciation and experience of each level of that hierarchy. Embedded in the experience is the reality that the mind is very likely to wear out before the body does. And that is where, I think, lifelong learning comes into play.

It’s about stretching, pushing, getting out a comfort zone (and that includes my beloved recliner and big screen TV) and taking on a big challenge to grow our minds.

Conclusion & My Pitch

I think for some people that could mean considering unlocking the mysteries of local government and deciding to consider getting involved. Wait! That’s too easy. Let me say it this way. It would mean learning about governance and equipping yourself to be the best, smartest, wisest, fairest and most highly motivated public servant walking the earth. It goes way beyond being a political animal. That is cheap public service. It’s not about plotting to make yourself look good or an opponent to look bad.

It is about marrying the ability to visualize a future with the technical knowledge and skills to oversee policy that make the best future happen. It’s not about getting elected and then learning how local government works. It’s just the opposite.

We need some lifelong learners who will see the value of having a professional staff working with a council that has the skill set to be professional in demeanor and in contribution.  And there is no reason why the citizen base itself can’t be helped along with lifelong learning of local government since it is all about serving them. That’s a big part of my motivation to blog and start a conversation with you. LFM

 

 

Local Control

.Reading time 3 minutes.

There are only two major levels of government in our country: federal and state. Everything else is a subdivision of state government.

Texas is a huge state as we all know. Many major state services, such as the criminal court system, are delivered at the county level. There are 254 counties in Texas. Many states only have a handful of counties, so you can see how dealing with 254 entities is not an easy task.

There are about 800+ city governments in Texas. I’ll update this blog with the exact number when I return from vacation. New cities and towns are General Law entities that operate under a state charter that pretty much says they can’t do anything unless the state law specifically says they can.

When they get to 5,000 in population a city can hold an election and become a Home Rule city. That pretty much means they can do just about anything they want to unless state law specifically says they can’t. Their ability to control their destiny greatly increases.

Then there are hundreds of school districts to carry out a primary state function – education.

To make things very complicated, there are also hundreds of special districts in Texas. They are creations of the state often initiated by developers, the county or the city themselves. I’ll provide a list for your reference next week. It is a long list and somewhat mind boggling.

You can imagine how complex it is for the state to carry out their primary duties through so many subdivisions it has created. That is why 50 years ago they created Regional Planning Agencies. There are 24 of them. NCTCOG was the first. There are very few federal and state dollars for transportation, environmental and many major programs that have regional implications that don’t flow through NCTCOG for the 16 countries in this region.

I want to get this introduction blogged because future blogs will build on this knowledge. If there is one phrase that explains all of these layers of government in Texas, it would be Local Control. Also, Self Governance is a related foundational concept.

Why is this understanding so critical? Because there has always been a battle between the federal and state control. If you were the 800-pound gorilla, your tendency might likely to be to mandate services to the state and then mandate they pay for it. That strategy increased during President Reagan’s term.

And now the movement that has always been there between Texas and its several thousand subdivisions is to take away the cherished and critically important Local Control and replace it with state control is ramping up like an athlete in steroids.

And the ultimate injustice – 1) mandate services, 2) allow local government to add services and service levels they prefer AND 3) limit the ability to pay for those services.

It’s absolutely crazy. More to come …

Lewis

The GoToPerson

.Reading time 2 minutes.

They are rare. I’m talking about the genuine GoToPerson. I’ve met a few in my career. NCTCOG has one I was fortunate enough to meet and have in my department when I was Director of Administration in 2001-2002. Donna Steward is retiring April 1 as Procurement & Facilities Coordinator. Her title should be Director of Whatever You Need. Donna is the quintessential GoToPerson.

While NCTCOG is celebrating their 50th anniversary this year, Donna has been there most of those years.

Due to the dynamic nature of NCTCOG’s services, they have expanded and reconfigured themselves many times. Probably about 50x would be my guess. Donna has been in on them all. When Donna gets called into yet another remodeling need, I don’t think she she says “I’m on it!” But she is. And everybody knows it.

How wonderful to hear and see the action attached to those three wonderful words: I’m on it!

I’m the kind of person who will worry about something unless I’m convinced somebody else is worrying about it for me. People like Donna takes on a task and gets it done. It’s easy to forget how most employees and volunteers are not that way. Some may have spurts of energy and enthusiasm. Some may anticipate and be in motion before they are called. To earn the Donna Steward GoToPerson Award, the one she deserves to have named after her, you’d have to be the GoToPerson for decades.

Oh wait! I’ll bet you have a GoToPerson in your current or past work (or volunteer) life. What makes them tick? They are the true servants by will. By examples they are leaders, standard setters. They posses that intelligence to know how to add value. They act in a capacity where their title doesn’t matter. And, yes, they know they are doing the work of more than one person.

So, have you told your Donna Steward’s you know their value and that the workplace would be quite different without them?

Lewis

Beyond Contentment

.Reading time 4 minutes.

We’ve been on many cruises and are grateful for every one of them. I’m always impressed with the well trained staff and how they deal with the guests. I enjoy watching people work. Most staffers on a ship seem content even though I know they go 8-9 months without seeing their families. I’m sure the Internet has helped.

But there is something I’ve noticed on this ship that is making the staff stand out like no other. I thought it was just just an individual or two and just a coincidence. Yet I keep seeing it too many times in too many places for it to be accidental.

These staffers are happy. I can always tell when my wife is content. Linda hums. It is a soothing, pleasant sound. Her sister does the same thing, so I am pretty sure it has to do with their mother. Contentment is a blessing.

But these staffers are singing. And a few are dancing. One guy is greeting the guests with hand spray before you walk into the buffet eating area. When we get off the elevator and round the corner into the room, it is easy to catch him singing and dancing a little step or two before he spots us. He sings a little “washy, washy” tune as he sprays.

In the huge formal dining room we can sit in different places and hear waitstaff singing to the music softly coming from the sound system. They are singing to each other. When you watch from across the room several can be seen doing a little dance to the music.

I do sense a little romance in the air. Or maybe I’m adding that part through my lens, for I am a romantic at heart.

I can only conclude that the morale must be sky high. And it is obvious to me that management must be doing something correct on the ship. Contentment is one thing. These workers are beyond being satisfied. They are bubbling over with an extra injection of motivation that is refreshing. More than just obligatory niceness. More than a common courtesy to coworkers.

I’ve got to find out before we leave the ship on Saturday. Do they have pep rallies for the employees? Does management push past the servitude relationship, because many of the workers are from third-world countries?

Does management go beyond the normal to make the staff feel appreciated, even loved? Is this amped up spirit coming directly from the captain? Is he so seasoned having mastered the technical aspects of sailing a ship that he wants to go past navigation and truly elevate the passengers’ experience by extending his enthusiasm through the lowest level staff member?

I was a wedding photographer while going to college. Once I had the technique down, my main enjoyment was keeping the bride and her mother calm. Is this similar here on the ship where the real enjoyment and pure joy comes from relationship building? Watching people grow in their skills while at the same time just plain being happy?

I think so.

Lewis

BTW. I’m still working on a more formal blog format and Website. Also, please forward this blog to anybody you think might be interested. As promised, my topics will be broad and largely what is on my mind that very day. All I need is an email address sent to LFM@citybase.net.

Grandkids

.Reading time 3 minutes.

Linda and I are in Belize. We have no plans to get off the cruise ship. We try to cruise twice a year, but the ports don’t matter. The ship could do a big circle in the ocean and return to our Texas port a week later as far as we’re concerned.

This cruise has more young people and young families compared to our last one – the Geriatric Cruise as we refer to it. We love to be around young families. Except when we see kids we really start missing our grandkids. They are 9, 11 and 13. They love to cruise. Kenneth & DeAnne take them as often as they can.

Most of the kids on board are young kids. We really do miss those early years with our grandkids. We live close by so they are a big part of our weekly lives. We cherish those early years. From 6 to 18 months was very special to me.

But now we get to enjoy their humor and intellect. All three are good conversationalists. The two oldest text regularly so we get that added benefit of a surprise message that one of them misses us or is looking forward to an upcoming sleepover.

When our first, Lindsey, was born we could not believe the feelings that overwhelmed us looking at and holding a grandchild. Our own son and daughter-in-law had given us a gift that had us giddy. We were ready!

The part that did surprise us was the depth of love that comes with a grandchild. How could it be that your great love for a child gets multiplied by a huge factor with a grandchild?

All three of our grandkids are very loving. That should not be a surprise given we have smothered them with love since their first day as a newborn. Well before they were conceived actually.

But for them to express their love, say it with meaning and give a genuine hug and kiss before we can say “come here” is a true gift from God.

We know we are blessed beyond description. We talk about something funny they said or a tender moment they gave us for days afterward.

Our grandkids make us care about the future. We want them to be smart but not cynical. For them to know that what appears to be true may not be so. We are teaching them to ask good questions. To seek wisdom and discernment. And to know that the Lord is with them every moment to be their helper.

Life is wonderful as we intertwine our lives with Lindsey, Lily and Anderson.

Lewis

Dear City Council: About Your Request for Input Regarding Our Next City Manager

.Reading time 8 minutes.

Dear City Council: About Your Request for Input Regarding Our Next City Manager

By Lewis F. McLain, Jr

Community survey for City Manager search

Mayor Brian Loughmiller and City Council invite citizens to provide input on the search criteria for the City Manager position via an online survey. Earlier this month, the city held a public input meeting aimed at giving city leaders insight into what residents hope to find in a permanent City Manager. The survey is an additional opportunity to provide feedback, and will remain open until March 28.

Dear City Council:

This may be coming as bad news for you, but the best City Manager Candidates are going to be interviewing YOU. Not the other way around. A magazine that hardly knows anything about McKinney may say we are Number One, but that’s not the way the city management profession may see the City Council. You haven’t done very well for about two decades, although your current Interim City Manager is a model. However, he doesn’t count. You needed him more than he needed you, and everybody has known that he could check out whenever he wanted to since he was already retired when he came in to save your butts.

I think you need to be asking for public input on how the council is going to persuade the best candidates to apply. Oh, you will get plenty of candidates who would take the job even if you promised them every day was going to be a living hell. The compensation is good, and the ability to relocate to the DFW area is a magnet. Plus they may be wanting to get out of their own Dodge City for a variety of reasons. Getting people to apply is not the issue. Getting them on board is not the issue. Keeping them long enough for their efforts to come to fruition and to be successful in every way is THE ISSUE.

Potential Interview Questions for the Council to Answer

If I were a candidate, here are my interview questions for you.

• Is McKinney a Council-Manager form of government?

• Do you know what that means?

• Are you going to allow the City Manager to operate as our City Charter outlines?

• Do you have an Underground Government here in McKinney? By that I mean several things.

     o Does the staff leak information to select council members, developers or community leaders?

     o Does the council allow vendors, developers and community leaders to have private meetings with council members with the intention of being persuaded of positions that will result in favorable council decisions without public discussion or knowledge that the Council has been lobbied?

    o Is the answer a quick Yes followed by “I do it for the education benefit and to be prepared for meetings?”

o And, if so, do you allow the proponent to tell you in those private meetings which other council members they may have talked to and whether they are in favor of the proposition or not?

o Have developers, realtors and builders outside McKinney found it difficult to get projects approved here in McKinney compared to Insiders?

o Have any of these Insiders ever tried to hi-jack a project that was in process by an Outsider?

o Do City Manager, Staff and Board/Commission recommendations consistently get overruled by the Council even when trying to follow Council policy?

o Does the City Council influence the Money Boards (MEDC/MCDC) to play favorites and direct money to pet projects or things the Council itself would be challenged on if spent out of the General Fund and competed with other needs in the City’s budget process?

o Do the Money Board recipients tend to become campaign contributors for Council Members or Candidates?

o Have your Money Boards ever been heavily weighted by board members employed by or closely associated with large amounts of funds given to any company?

o Are there any Council Members, Money Board Members or Staff Members that have been employed by firms (before, during or after) working for the City or that were beneficiaries of Money Board funds?

o Is there a Good Ole Boy Network that is slanted toward longtime friends that are constantly rotated around various boards and commissions?

o Are things that should be known publicly deliberated routed through the City Attorney in order to claim attorney-client privilege and keep out of the public’s view?

o Is there evidence of Walking Quorums, in all the many forms we all know can exist?

o Is there evidence of Jump-In-Front real estate deals where knowledge of City plans leak from Money Boards, Council or the P&Z Commission such that real estate professionals and developers quickly acquire the property in order to make a profit by selling property to the City at higher prices?

o Are discussions in Executive Sessions (whether Council or the Money Boards) ever leaked to persons who should not be privy to those discussions?

o Has the council or any member every gotten involved in a staff issue that resulted in an FBI inquiry?

• Is there anybody on the City staff who cannot be terminated by the new City Manager if he or she concludes that person does not fit within the organization the City Manager wants to build?

• Is there enough transparency and honesty among the Council Members to answer these questions among yourselves as well as to the public?

I have about a dozen more questions and a few hypothetical case studies I may be sending you, all of which may be topics of my future blogs. However, I will wait to see if any of you will provide my blog readers an honest response to these questions. There is a good chance I may have a City Manager Candidate reading this blog and anxious to know whether or not to apply. In fact, many of these questions came indirectly from City Managers in discussions I’ve had with them over the years.

Thanks!
Lewis

Dear City Council: What About Those Legal Fees

.Reading time 4 minutes.

Dear City Council:

Yesterday I included you on my blog mail out even though only one of you accepted my invitation to receive my blog a couple of weeks ago. A large number of my blogs will be letters to you.

I am interested in knowing if you found that particular blog of value to you? The reason I ask is that I have already heard from some of my readers wondering why the legal fees to the City Attorney’s firm are so large and are growing so rapidly? Legal advice and representation is understandably expensive, but $7.4 million from FY 2010 through FY 2015 does raise some eyebrows.

It seems that I do recall that the level of money paid for legal services came into question a few years back and it appeared, to me, that there was some momentum growing to question those costs. Questioning included asking if taxpayer money would be saved if many of those services were brought in-house? Or if there were other qualified firms that might find ways to save the City some money after the current firm searched for savings and presented them to you? I do acknowledge that law firms perhaps don’t quite fit the same criteria as other professional firms, but I do know that a fresh look and new set of eyes is the rationale often used to look for staff replacement as well as outside consultants. Not because there is anything wrong necessarily – it’s just good business practices to question everything.

In fact, one of the toughest questions that reveals the level of tolerance someone has is to ask them if you fired everyone under your control today and allowed them to reapply for their jobs, would you hire them back? If your answer is anything but Yes, even if you pause for a minute, real transparency is in how you would answer that question and what you would do about a No or a Doubtful or Reluctant Yes.

You would expect a city manager to be doing that on his or her own, without being pressured by the council. But this is one of the costs that falls in your lap.

I listened to the three of you newly elected officials in front of a Tea Party audience when campaigning – talking tough on how you would be a superior councilmember. Look down my recap of the McKinney Check Register. You as a council don’t control all of those expenditures in reality. On the other hand, you directly control some of the biggest ones. I’ve got about two dozen on that list I am going to be asking you to examine in future blogs. The first is now related to these legal fees. You can fund a ton of pothole fixes and meaningful programs with just a small fraction of savings in legal fees.

I challenge all of you, especially the three puppeting the words of those who elected you to walk the walk and not just talk the talk.

Thank You!

Lewis

See http://www.citybase.net/downloads/mckinneycheckregisters.xlsx

Understanding Data & That Misleading Word, Transparency

.Reading time 11 minutes.

I will be talking a lot about Transparency in my blogs, a word that is overused and even misused and abused in government. Yes, there are efforts made by governments and businesses to be transparent. Even the Texas State Comptroller awards programs are designed to promote transparency. Many of those efforts produce translucency more than transparency. I will try to explain and give examples in this blog and in many more to come. However, I must tell you something. I was handed a gift just a few days ago. While the current and past state comptrollers have promoted transparency in local government for many years, a new program has been launched called “Transparency Stars: Recognizing Local Transparency Achievements.”

The Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts is proud to announce the upcoming Transparency Stars program, recognizing local governments for going above and beyond in their transparency efforts. Our office will recognize government entities that accomplish the following:

• open their books not only in their traditional finances, but also in the areas of contracts and procurement, economic development, public pensions and debt obligations.

• provide clear and meaningful financial information not only by posting financial documents, but also through summaries, visualizations, downloadable data and other relevant information.

The emphasis on the last few words is mine. I would have to look, but I am pretty sure my writings and presentations on aspects of this subject started 20-25 years ago. Local governments are good at generating data. Operating data. But only in recent years have there been tools and efforts to turn operating data into management data. Some will recall that in addition to 1) summaries and 2) visualizations, I have emphasized 3) exceptions, 4) comparisons, 5) rankings, 6) drilldowns, 7) trends and 8) written explanations.
And even with data presentation improvements, the real test is to determine if the critical message is delivered and understood such as when the Mayor of Dallas pierces through the data and staff babble to declare, and I paraphrase, “the condition of our roadway system STINKS!”

An Example of Transparency Efforts: The Check Register

Many cities now publish an online listing of all of their checks. On July 19, 2015 I went online at the City of McKinney’s Web site and found they had a listing of checks back to 2011. Each year was in a separate file, with 2011 in a PDF format and the other years in Excel. Then I found that over $8 million were written to the bank card company handling the purchasing card program for the City. Of more concern than that to me were a number of vendor payments that were redacted. I expressed my concerns in an email letter to the Interim City Manager and Finance Director attached on that date.

To their credit, they now have an Interactive Financial Reporting Tool that came online in August 2015. As of a couple of weeks ago, they had the old version I was using and have now taken it down. Please note the new check registers and even the payroll register found at https://www.mckinneytexas.org/index.aspx?NID=213. The capability to see more information is truly impressive. They have broken down the PCard spending! They have also UN-redacted many (but not all) of the vendor purchases I had questioned. My compliments to the City of McKinney staff efforts to improve Transparency.

But Does This Effort Accomplish Transparency & Understandability?
The City is providing a check register that almost quadrupled the disclosure of details with over 215,000 pieces of data. I have worn out this quip, but I will continue to use it: as much as I love numbers, I cannot necessarily spot an anomaly by scanning pages of data by eye, even though the City’s sort feature makes it easier to do some ranking. One of the Comptroller’s criteria (downloadable) is of great benefit on the McKinney site. However, it is lacking in looking for the most critical areas of spending that will surface only when summarizing data, then sorting.

For operating data to become management data, somebody has to transform listings into summaries. Even then there must be an appreciation for the Pareto Principle (the 80/20 rule), which simply means I first want to examine the fewest number of (people, problems, items, etc.) that make up the largest impact (dollars, overtime, moral problems, etc). You would still want to see information portrayed for comparison purposes, such as over a number of years, to spot trends.

Excel Pivot Tables to the Rescue

To explain what I am describing, I have a link  to an Excel spreadsheet that takes the good McKinney work and addresses the Comptroller’s new program to make it better. The first tab is the DOWNLOAD of the 215,193 expenditure records from 2010 through January 2016. The second tab, PIVOT BY PAYEE, is where you can see a drilldown that includes 1) the description the City provides and 2) the Fund it was charged to. All elements are sorted from the largest to the small dollars.

Please appreciate this point, whether you are a financial analyst or a city councilmember: The pivot tables have organized (summarized) 215,193 spending elements totaling $998,454,719 into a meaningful presentation that allows you, the reader, to scan the entire $1 billion picture quickly and then to drill down into details at your desired level of information. Folks, that’s powerful. That’s a giant step toward Transparency.

What Do We Do Now?

That’s simple. Read with curiosity. Ask questions. If you are a McKinney resident, this is your money. If you are a councilmember or community leader, learn about where the money goes. There’s a huge amount of discussion in closed meetings that you can’t be privy to, but when the money goes out the door – it’s your business. I can only think of one acceptable condition when the amount and purpose of money going out the door should not be disclosed – the garnishment of wages and payments related to child support. There may be more excuses for redactions but not in my book.

I do have several questions for my city council and staff after preparing this analysis and blog. Actually, I have an Open Records Request for some of the items and should be hearing back soon. Here is my challenge to you if you are a city official: why would you wait for somebody like me to surprise you with a question or perhaps even a finding that you should have already asked and known? The reason I say this is because the dreadful fact is that city officials don’t read their own information. Raise your hand if you have actually read your CAFR in depth. Heck, most cities have been producing a check register for years. As a council, are you looking at that information? The City of McKinney is averaging $104,000 on audit fees. Are you getting more than a drive-by explanation of what’s in it? More coming in a few weeks.

The reality is that the once unavailability of tools for digesting millions of records, slicing and dicing are now available to just about everyone. If you have Excel, you can download years of check registers and create pivot tables in a matter of minutes – no exaggeration.
The Excel spreadsheet is quite large, too big to attach. Therefore, you will need to download from www.citybase.net/downloads/mckinneycheckregisters.xlsm to see the details as well as the construction of the pivot tables. However, I have attached a PDF of the spreadsheet at the vendor/payee level. Vilfredo_Pareto

Oh, and regarding Professor Pareto , you will soon learn the importance of his rule when you continue to be faced with terabytes of data, a meeting agenda that just doesn’t seem to end, or which house repair you are going to tackle first? In this age of information overload, it is the only path to control and sanity. All you have to look at in the spreadsheet is the first 448 items (11.3%) of the vendors/payees that account for 96.4% of the near $1 billion of spending. LFM