I hope some of you appreciated our trip up Rocky Hill last week, a little break from thinking about the City of Lindsay. For me it helped bring things back into focus: they’ve been moving so fast, I was seeing double.
Take the two tanks of gas that had to be dropped from Bill Zigler’s contract as interim city manager, for instance. Such a modest request from such a modest person, small compensation for what will be a significant increase in his responsibilities. Who would oppose such a paltry request?
Clearly Mr. Zigler had calculated the two tanks as an approximation of what his increased expenses might be for these additional responsibilities, and we can admire his conservative math. Politically, however, it was an enormous miscalculation, because that qualitative number stuck out like a sore thumb and revealed what no one would have seen before then: the $400/month vehicle allowance that he already gets even though he doesn’t bring his car to work a majority of the time. He rides his bike from his home in Exeter. How can he use his car for work if it isn’t here?
Councilman Mecum was the one who spotted it, blew the whistle and dropped a red flag on that play. He would pay for it later in the white man’s news, as he often does for taking the side of the peoples’ purse. “What’s this ‘two tanks of gas’?” he asked, pointing to its absurdity as a budget line item. “Two tanks for what, a Volkswagon? an F-16?”
He was discussing substituting a reasonable mileage compensation arrangement to replace the vehicle allowance when he was cut off by Councilwoman Kimball. Pam informed Steve this wasn’t the right time to be questioning contracts. She was wrong: the two-tank addition was a change from the contract that had been worked out in closed session the week before. The city manager’s contract is the only one the Council gets to approve, and an open, honest discussion about how we should compensate our city employees was in the public interest. She cut it off.
Backpeddling, Zigler withdrew the two-tank request and reminded the Council this was the contract they were offering him, not the other way around (as if those two tanks were their idea.) His guile annoyed Councilwoman Sanchez, who voted no with Councilman Mecum, tying the vote 2-2. This delayed the approval of the contract until the following regular meeting, where it was discussed behind closed doors. Hopefully the Council at least considered Mecum’s mileage compensation idea then for future use, because afterward Zigler’s contract was approved 4-1 with the flat $400/month vehicle allowance intact, no vehicle use or mileage accountability required. I hope $3,600 is enough to cover Bill’s bicycle repairs over the next year.
This man, Bill “Bike Lane” Zigler, is the same man who convinced Mayor Padilla two years ago to sign a resolution asking CalTrans to change the alignment of Highway 65 to correct for indelicate entrances to Country Waffles and the Super 8 Motel. CalTrans’ response was to move the take-off point of the new route to the south of town so that it will now bypass Lindsay completely 1/2 mile to the west.
Mr. Zigler was excited by the prospect of opening land for commercial development along the new route. However, even Danny Salinas, who originally had supported the CalTrans resolution, saw that it’s the kiss of death for the development we now have. Yet they hired this man to run our town - for the interim.
May they show greater judgment in choosing someone qualified for the permanent position.
(Footnote: Since submitting this piece for publication, I have learned that I made two substantial errors which I would now like to correct. First, Councilman Mecum said "F-150," not "F-16." The principle is the same, but my mind took his question to a logical extreme. Second, apparently Mr. Zigler did not know the two-tanks provision was in the contract, so he couldn't have concocted the idea. According to Finance Director Tamara Lakin, it was a residual from Mr. Zamora's merger of the city manager contract with Mr. Zigler's contract for department head of Planning and Economic Development. Mr. Zamora had not been approved to make such a merger, and apparently Mr. Zigler had not read the contract carefully, so I don't know who's really to blame for that faux pas. My assumption that Mr. Zigler had devised the two-tank number may have been logical but it was unfounded. My concern about the vehicle allowance stands, however.)
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Trudy
Wischemann is a writer trained in environmental planning who is aghast. You can send her your thoughts on public
process c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or visit
www.trudysnotesfromhome.blogspot.com and leave a comment there.
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