Consultants; Consultants; Consultants and more Consultants $ $ $ $ $
Does anyone else out there ever ask why, when problems, situations and questions come up we have to pay someone outside of the city to do a report or a study or an evaluation? What do we pay our people for? Is this just a form of obfuscation? Don’t we have people capable of analyzing and evaluating their work? Are they capable of using logic and critical thinking? Do they know enough about their work to apply these principals? Do we know when we farm out these reports etc. if we are going to get objective results or politically desirable results?
Who controls the scope and instructs these firms as to what results are desired? Now we are paying some entity to determine the cause of a water main break. Will we find out that utilities had nothing whatsoever to do with it? This is where the question of leadership comes in. Leaders take responsibility and don’t pass the buck. They figure out what went wrong and fix it. If they can’t recognize problems in their supposed area of expertise then you have to wonder why they are there.
Would Mayor Green an experienced contractor and master carpenter send a couple framing carpenters with 6 months experience to build a house in Cypress Head with his name on it? Would Bob Ford who I consider a brilliant man with many years in law enforcement send a rookie cop to conduct a murder investigation? I think not. These guys know what’s going on and I don’t think the rest of the council is that naïve. You need to evaluate your employees skill levels, If you are able and make sure that the job gets done properly. You must be diligent and always conscious of potential problems.
Someone has egg on their face.
Hi Woody
Yes, we still do have more than a few employees that are capable of analyzing and evaluating the City work product. Regretfully out of total frustration and intimidation we now have a tendency to sit back and watch as some of our city operations run off the rails.
Hiring an outside consultant to do a report or a study or a evaluation when things go wrong is an old political public relations trick. The trick is to put some time between the screw-up and the report to allow the public’s emotions about the event to fade.
It is somewhat like the circus that goes on at city council meetings when the Mayor laughs and tells public speakers ‘We’ll get back to you’ – with no intention to do anything.