tony jeter dot com

This will be my final post concerning the TEDC Board appointment debacle that occurred during last week’s meeting. The following five items will hopefully provide a good summation of my concerns.

1. I always thought the purpose of term limits was to limit terms. Since the Council instituted term limits over four years ago the Council has too often bent over backwards to do anything BUT limit terms.
2. The practice of having people serve on multiple boards in the name of cross-pollination is, in my opinion, nothing more than a tactic used by some groups to maintain control of those boards.  Advocates of this practice argue that cross-pollination facilitates communication between various boards. I believe that there should be a limit on the number of boards an individual can serve on. My preference would be one board appointment per individual.  This policy would not preclude boards from allowing members from other city boards to serve in a non-voting capacity.  It would, however, significantly expand the number of citizens that could be involved in city government.
3. Continuity is another argument for keeping the same people serving on boards until the end of time.  The feined anxiety over losing continuity on a board because a few people rotate off borders on ludicrous.  How can a board with 15 members completely fall apart because a few people rotate off? There is no single board member that is so important. I can attest that the world does not stop when an immediate past Board Chair rotates off the board.
4. At the above referenced Council meeting three of the boards that were up for new members picked their own appointments.  These boards were The Developments Standards Advisory Board “DSAB”, the Airport Board and TEDC Board.  This was unprecedented in my six years on the council. Giving boards the ability pick their own members is bad policy.  This is a responsibility given to the Council by the City Charter.  It is one thing for an advocacy group to submit a list of their members for consideration but it is entirely different for board chairs to hand pick their board members.
5. There are very few appointments that require a certain type of education or skill set as a qualification for service. The DASB board, for instance, must have some members that have backgrounds in construction, engineering, etc.  Over the last few years some on the Council have adopted the attitude that they are the arbiters of all knowledge when it comes to determining whether a person is qualified to serve on various boards. The subjective criteria often used appears to be more focused on who the person is instead of what kind of job he or she would do as a board member. One qualification that doesn’t seem to matter these days is independence. The best board members are those that are independent. Independence means not having to worry about voting to please your boss, your customers, your bankers or anybody else that might have leverage over you.  It is this very qualification that allows me to write this post without having to worry about retribution from the irritated masses.

When the Council instituted term limits several years ago for our board appointments there were concerns expressed by some citizens that we would end up with a dearth of qualified candidates.  Other arguments were made on behalf of experience and continuity making the case that it could take six years before anyone could be up to speed on how things “should” go. Thankfully, the Council at that time saw those arguments for what they were and proceeded to institute the policy.  Since then we have had very little trouble filling the boards. We have also jumped through hoops on several occasions to circumvent the spirit of the policy while not breaking the letter of the policy.  The policy was put into place to specifically limit the amount of time an individual can serve on any given board.  What occurred last week is yet another example of going against the spirit of our policy while adhering to the letter. Three of the five Council members (a majority) voted to reappoint a person to the Temple Economic Development Corporation “TEDC” for a third term. Technically it was only his second term, because one of his terms was a result to an earlier acrobatic maneuver by the Council to allow various boards to “own” seats on other boards thus creating automatic appointments.  In this instance, this individual served one term on the TEDC board, because he was the Chairman of the Reinvestment Zone Board.

My question is this. What’s more important: the spirit or the letter of the policy? The Council has gotten pretty good about focusing more on the letter and less on the spirit.

Click here to view a video clip of the 7-minute discussion from last Thursday’s Council meeting.

Out of the more than 51 applications from our civic minded citizens we apparently had no one qualified enough to serve on the Temple Economic Development Corporation’s “TEDC” Board of Directors. Due to this experience deficit, the Council, with the blessing of the TEDC board, reappointed an individual with six years of service to another three-year term. In addition to serving on the TEDC board this individual also serves on the Airport Board and the Reinvestment Zone Board.  These are the three most highly sought after board appointments year in and year out.

Lets do a quick analysis of our “skimpy” applicant pool.

Aviation

• Pilot with 40 years and 5,000 pilot hours
• Pilot with 20 years USAF, 15 years with American Airlines & 6 years flying private jets

Business/ Professional

• Controller for a national manufacturing company based in Temple
• Finance Director for regional college
• USDA Senior Auditor
• HR Director (also former School Administrator)
• Retired Budget Analyst for the U.S. Army
• Current owner of a national construction company
• Retired MIS Manager
• Investments
• Retired Automotive Engineer (Ford)
• Insurance

Health Care

• Research RN
• Retired Nutritionist

Legal

• Retired Judge
• Retired Police Officer
• Attorney

In the more than six years on the Council I have never seen such a quantity or quality of applicants.  There is something definitely wrong with our appointment process.  Nine years is too long to serve on any City board when there is a list of supremely qualified folks waiting in line for a turn to serve.

“I agree but”. I am not sure what it is about those three words that drive me crazy. It could be that they are three of the most common words associated with a cop-out. At the council meeting last night we were appointing people to various City boards when we came to the Temple Economic Development Corporation “TEDC.” One of the individuals that the TEDC Board “approved” for us to appoint had already been serving consecutively on the board since 12/02. When I raised the point that reappointing someone to a third term would effectively circumvent our two term limit policy I got the good old reliable “I agree but.”, I agree but the TEDC Board voted for him, I agree but he has done a great job for the City, I agree but we are gonna pull our typical contortionist act of bending every which way we can to break our own rules to accommodate an individual.

Never mind that this person is now serving on a total of three City boards. Never mind that this person will be on the TEDC board for 9 years straight. Never mind that we had a stack of applications of well qualified citizens wanting to serve. Never mind that we deviated from our own term limits policy for the umpteenth time. Never mind that our appointments often smack of favoritism and undermine our credibility. Never mind. It all boils down to “I agree BUT.”

I want to go on record saying that my objections to this appointment have nothing to do with the individual. This particular person has been of great benefit to this community having served tirelessly for many years. My issue is why have term limits if we are not going to follow them?

The board appointment process is one of the most difficult tasks we have on the Council. It is a process that, in my opinion, lacks both transparency and objectivity. It is a topic that I plan to write more about over the next few weeks.

There is a rumor making its way around town that the City used Community Development Block Grant “CDBG” Dollars to pay to tear down both the old CVS and the office building next to the H.E.B. on Adams. The rumor is not true. Glad I could be of assistance this Wednesday evening.

I have lost count of the number of times people have asked me why the public has not risen up en masse about the conflict of interest issues I have written about so extensively on this blog.  I never really had an acceptable answer to give because I too am somewhat flummoxed.

Then something happened at home that got me to thinking. My wife and I were lounging on the couch the other night after getting the kids to bed. Since we don’t have cable, our channel surfing yielded few options. We ended up settling on a re-run of The Mummy and proceeded to kick back.  It took me all of five minutes to figure out that we had landed on Telemundo and the movie had Spanish voice-overs. I was too tired to change the channel and quickly decided to conduct an impromptu social experiment. I was curious as to how long my betrothed would go until she realized they weren’t speaking English. I finally broke down and asked her if she could understand what was going on. She looked at me, then the TV and back to me and informed me she knew the whole time. She was just waiting to see when I would notice.  Had we been a tad bit more exhausted we very well may have watched the rest of the movie without catching on.

All that led to an epiphany of sorts on this topic. It goes like this. I think people are too tired and/or too busy to tune in so they tune out until something jars them to action.  Think about it for a second. How often do we choose the path of least resistance in an effort to conserve energy? How often do we consider ourselves fortunate to have made it through another day without losing our job, our identity, our car at Wal-Mart - let alone our minds? Most folks just don’t have the time or energy to care and that is precisely what people on the other side of this issue are hoping for. I have been told that the Telegram won’t even cover it because it is not really news.

So what’s a contrarian to do? Well, I’m gonna learn Spanish and continue to call a spade a spade - that’s what. On the Spanish, my Telemundo experience showed me just how much better my TV watching experience could be.  If I can become fluent, I’ll have a couple of more channels to surf each night. On the conflict of interest issue, maybe, just maybe, we’ll reach a tipping point one day and the voters will exercise their power.

Last Thursday we discussed the following agenda item in executive session.

Consider adopting a resolution authorizing a Chapter 380 development
agreement with the potential developers of a tract of land in south Temple north of FM 93 and east of South 31st Street to provide for the development of that property and the conveyance of certain right-of-way and infrastructure to the City.

I can’t go into any details of the discussion that took place since we were in executive session. No news today though. I wanted to post this for possible future reference. For those of you wondering if I am out of stuff to write about the answer is no.  I just think that this particular agenda item could be very interesting to follow.

The email below was forwarded to the Council via the City Manager. The incident occurred last Friday, July 31st.

I would like to share a call with all of you that I had the pleasure of witnessing today.

A call for an 8 month old not breathing dropped at the Canyon Creek Townhomes. It was assigned to M18 and E-4. E-3 was paying attention to the radio and realized that they were closer to the call and made the call. E-3 was on scene within 3-4 minutes of the call. CPR was initiated and the baby was carried to M-18 who arrived within 2 minutes.

Upon eval in the ambulance the baby had a heart rate in the low 30s and was apneic. M-18 and E-3 medic continued to resusitate and upon arrival at the ED, the baby had strong pulses and was crying. The crews recognized that the baby needed BLS and rapid transport…and it worked.

The baby had an allergic reaction to a new baby formula and had an anaphylactic reaction. Mom gave an epi pen which was beneficial, but without the team work of E-3 and M18 this childs outcome would have been grim.

When you see these crews pat them on the back and commend them for a job well done.

Jeffrey A. Mincy
Clinical Manager
Scott & White EMS Inc.