Maybe I’m too much of an idealist when it comes to expecting that the wheels of government grind slowly but surely in the direction of progress. Its taken me several days of detoxification to tackle the subject of the Norwalk Museum. Part of that had to do with the total disgust I felt after attending the Thursday night common council committee meeting of Land use & Building Management. That meeting demonstrated in so many ways what is wrong with Norwalk’s government. All the committee had to do was vote on whether pass a proposal from the Friends of the Museum to the Law and Personnel Departments for review. It seems so simple, doesn’t it, when I express it that way. But getting it expressed in the form of an action is something I learned from School House Rock. I’m not sure where these committee members learned their governmental process, but a refresher course in getting the business of government done seems to be desperately needed.
The item in question, as phrased on the agenda was: 1. Review proposal from Friends of the Norwalk Museums, Inc. to the Norwalk Historical Commission for the City to enter into an agreement for the operation of the Norwalk Museum.
Chairman Doug Sutton opened discussion, with a 5 minute dissertation on curing concrete. Okay, it was an analogy of sorts. But it missed the opportunity to lay out what the real issue.
The Historical Commission voted unanimously to accept the concept of outsourcing the operation of the Norwalk Museum to an non-profit group. They had a proposal from the Friends of the Norwalk Museum, and had referred it to the Land Use & Building Management Committee for review.
So what does the Land Use & Building Management committee actually oversee? Certainly not the day to day operations of what transpires in city buildings. They oversee the minutia of funding the operational aspects of buildings, not the uses within. So if you read through the years of minutes, as I have, you see the actions concerning leases, contracts to authorize repairs, and the matters concerning city easements and conveyances. All of these concrete issues, but not of concrete.
Somehow, when it comes to the Norwalk Museum, a fog descends and what has been clear becomes unclear and what is straightforward becomes convoluted. And thus, after Doug Hempstead made a motion to move this conceptual proposal to the law department, suddenly all sorts of non pertinent issues came crawling out of the woodwork.
First Bill Krummel has to speak in circles about wanting progress yet worried about what the union thinks.
Then Gwenn Briggs says that she’d like to see a board of directors for the Museum.
Kevin Poruban, after arriving late, and thus missing the preambles says that the problem is with the union opposing this proposal because of the job description of the curator.
Doug Hempstead starts to get frustrated and says he’s frustrated that this item did not get onto the last Common Council Agenda so that the council could vote (up or down) on passing this to the law department.
Then the Union guy speaks, (Joe Delalo NEA) and he says what any union guy would say. The union does not care who the curator is but they want to preserve the union position. This should be a surprise to Peter Bondi who has stated on August 22, “The Union representative has declined the proposal stating that the Union will file a prohibitive practice because the Friends want to do the Curator’s job.”. Oh what a tangled web we weave. But the continuing discussion did not stop here at the obvious resolution of whether the union supported or opposed the Friends’ proposal, it went on and on and on about the job description that has never changed in substance since 1972. Is there any job description in America that has not undergone a revision since 1972?
But the hounds have been let loose and so ever and all issues that could possibly be crammed into a discussion about moving a conceptual proposal to the law department is out there. The chairman, Doug Sutton, makes no efforts to reign in the discussions to the agenda item at hand, and I am transfixed by the train wreckage of government gone off the rails.
Within the Land Use & Building Management committee rests the power to authorize spending to maintain buildings. Yet year after year, the historic buildings that the city owns are not included in the umbrella maintenance contracts the city uses to upkeep its properties. And many of the issues now being discussed relate right back to the inability of simple maintenance issues being ignored by the curator which not surprisingly relate right back to this committees funding and support. The nub of it? If the city had actually funded operations of the museum the Friends would have not been forced to the position of funding through donations the operation of the museum in the first place. The irony of this does not permeate the thick layer of feigned political outrage because now we are down the infamous level of “process.”
Krummel is now wound up. “I’m concerned about process.” He cites from the minutes that the proposal before does not include the changes that were in the July Historical Commisison minutes. He cites that the union was against it the proposal. He asks if the language change means they change the union position. Yegads. Hadn’t Krummel been listening to the union guy says that all the union cared about was preserving the position of a curator, and nothing else. The conceptual proposal says nothing about the curator because it is not the issue here. The issue is whether to outsource the operations of the museum or not. Since the city chooses not to fund the operations, then it is can likely be concluded that the city has made that decision over and over and for a number of years. But its still process.
And so Gail Wall points out that the Historical Commission did in fact make a language change to reflect that a curator would exist under the framework of the conceptual proposal. Her copy of the proposal has the change. Krummel retorts his does not. All eyes in the packed room swivel over to Historical Commission Chair Peter Bondi. “I did do that. I made the changes in July and then in August and sent them right away,” he says. And there for a stunning instant, all of the details about who did what when should have melted away because here was the crystal clear moment, the real time irrefutable evidence that the museum operation in addition to the functionality of the Historical Commission was broken. Was Bondi implying that it was Alan Lo who failed to distribute the August update to the proposal? Why was it Bondi and not curator and sole staff person to the commission sending along referrals?
The moment passes and its back on the merry go round again, because no one wants to let go of the curator issue now. The curator, btw, is supposed to be the secretary of the Historical Commission and the lone staff person to that commission. In the few meetings that I have attended, she does not show up. Thus it was left to Bondi to either appoint a secretary (which he did not) or perform the duties himself, which he chose to do.
Krummel is confused and can’t manage to get out of this own thought patterns to amend the proposal before him to include the language about including a curator. The union guys is getting nervous and he now wants everyone to know that the curator should be running the museum because that is what the job description says. Ralph Bloom points out that he was the original curator and that the job description doesn’t exactly say that. And it goes on some more, with Gail Wall pointing out that for 25 years the Friends have been running the museum and that worked just fine in those years.
Hempstead then asks if according to the union contract can the Historical Commission fire the curator, and the union guy says yes. Poruban doesn’t like this answer and says that he’ll put Hal Alvord on the spot by having him weigh in on that question. Alvord dances around the subject by way of pointing out that, you can terminate anyone and that can be by any supervisor based on a the contract. But NMEA has progressive discipline.
More discussion and finally they get around to the vote. Krummel announces that he will vote against it. So Poruban does too, but when Krummel doesn’t propose an alternative they go back and revote the motion as Hempstead stated. So off goes the proposal by the Friends to the law and personnel departments.
The disgust I had at that point was too much to continue seeing what else this committee would mangle. None of the committee members seemed interested in moving the process forward. Krummel was left to his rambling, Poruban was allowed to interject new items, and no one made any effort to amend the proposal for anything that they brought up in discussion.
For the record, I cite below meeting minuets from this same commitee in February of 2006.
Discussion continued about whether or not items should go before the Council and then to the Committee, or to the Committee first and then on to the Council, and included discussion of the reasoning for staff sending items to the Council prior to Committee meetings. Mr. Kydes stated that he believed it was staff’s decision to determine which Committee or Council review the information first, and it was the responsibility of staff and not the Legal Department to develop the agreement; the Legal Department should review them afterwards to be sure the City is protected. Mr. Hempstead felt that Mr. Krummel’s question had a point, and further discussion followed between Committee members and Mr. Lo.
How many times will this committee debate what the correct process for submitting proposals for referrals and approvals? That answer, unfortunately, is as many times as it takes. And that is our loss.
