Distressing and Alarming
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Dear City Council Members, ……
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It appears to me that the city council is being steered, perhaps by Mayor Green, to skirt the legitimate right of citizens, regarding opportunities for input. In addition, the deliberate scheduling of special important meetings while one member who is not a team player for Mayor Green is out of town is especially distressing and alarming.
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I urge the city council members, not to let Mayor Green and the resigning city manager to blow the whole ship up. You as council members have the responsibility to keep the Port Orange government as whole as is necessary during this important time for true reform in city government and city politics. Understand that while this contest between Mayor Green and citizens is going on, the ugly scenarios which are developing is publicized with the background theme
of a highly suspect multi million dollar Riverwalk Project, and eternally close alliances between Mayor Green and the Grand Master Developer.
of a highly suspect multi million dollar Riverwalk Project, and eternally close alliances between Mayor Green and the Grand Master Developer.
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If you can not see all this as a spectacular disservice to the citizens of Port Orange, than someone here is not in touch with reality.
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The citizens have a right to inter react with Port Orange city hall, as they have conducted themselves, and as are doing all over this nation for the past few years.
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It appears to me, because of public statements made by Mayor Green, the city of Port Orange is on the brink of censuring and destroying support from the citizens of Port Orange. Unless the city council reigns in the emperor Green, and his undue resentment of citizens closely watching the work of the Mayor, City Manager and city operations, the problems you have all been previously dealt, due to the secretive actions of the former city manager and mayor Green,
I suggest will evolve into worse appearances of deception which will be understood by the majority of citizens who at this time do not know or care what is going on between the city’s mayor and citizens.
I suggest will evolve into worse appearances of deception which will be understood by the majority of citizens who at this time do not know or care what is going on between the city’s mayor and citizens.
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I suggest that you will be getting negative national coverage of the politics of Port Orange. Mayor Green’s legacy and his financial relationships among all those who appeared to support the city giving 10 million dollars to a developer, because the way the mayor is reacting to his perception of “not good citizens” is at the heart of democracy all over this nation. Attention will be given to how city council members react and try to handle an explosive situation from becoming nuclear.
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The alleged morale of city employees should be judged against the alleged distrust of government by many citizens throughout this nation. It has come to Port Orange as someone had predicted eight years ago. Unless the city council can take steps to see that better relationships with citizens who want accountability in city government takes place, this city will blow up and no one will want to work in Port Orange nor be on the city council. The city watch dog group is here to stay and I think is growing in number. Deal with it, don’t make war with it, and consider the consequences of trying to stifle those who do not approve of city operations which need total, real reform. The facts are there. Someone is mis handling all the problems which have occurred since a public works director was caught stealing garbage from a city yard. Think about it. Is someone responsible for mishandling of problem after problem, or is this all the work of “not good citizens”.
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I would like to invoke some thought and consideration about the present circumstances and the potential ramifications of the current managerial and organizational implosion that is occurring at City Hall. Understand that this implosion is occurring in conjunction with the existing Allen Green political paradigm under the parallel management paradigm of Lifesaver CEO Greg Kisela and his imported and recently deported FCCMA managerial hordes. Remember that this failing regime is simply Allen Green’s re-assemblage of the retrograded Ken Parker management paradigm, and to bring into remembrance a statement that Mayor Green made concerning the ushering in of the Greg Kisela managerial era, “There is sure A lot of Ken Parker in Greg Kisela”.
With this in mind, the citizens of Port Orange must understand that the interim status of the city with the current managerial implosion and a city manager that has abandoned his ship is analogically similar to a middle east country with no governing power that is subject to even more nefarious political and managerial re-assemblage. Since the mayor is the vicar of the old paradigm of closed governance and old school special interest cronyism it is imperative that the city council and concerned citizen activists are impeccable in keeping the mayor from recapitulating his archaic and opaque special interest regime.
One of the most important considerations that should be focused in on is the bottleneck of capital projects and programs within the city that are coming to a screaching halt. The day to day operations within the city are one thing and are handled extremely well by a contingent of competent and underappreciated long term city employees and middle management stakeholders, but the capital programs and budgetary continuity is being derailed and has been by Kisela’s incompetent imported management team who has flew the coupe following the example of their CEO. Allan Green has, and still does endorse this team and is desperately attempting to not only shore it up, and to do so from the same FCCMA retread hordes, but to do this covertly and independently from the rest of the City Council.
Kisela’s role will exponentially diminish during the next several weeks which means Allen Green’s reality testing will also diminish as he desperately lashes out to maintain his demagogic control and try to neuter the council’s influence. This should become abundantly clear in a pathological sense in the following days leading up to the special council meeting and should be a red flag to our elected officials of the mayor’s imminent psychological meltdown.
The millions of dollars of capital projects throughout the city’s departments that have been budgeted and approved for this fiscal year have been administratively disconnected and their has been a retardation of managerial authorization due to a lack of understanding by the mayor, and a lack of continuity due to the CEO’s lack of fiduciary responsibility and desperate self interested and motivated exodus to his golden parachute assignment in Destin Florida. Their has also been a general lack of understanding of the nuts and bolts of the disciplines that Kisela’s illegitimately imported FCCMA MIT retread directors had that were overseeing departments and they lacked a general knowledge of purchasing policy and budgetary processes, even though Kisela hired them in order to solidify his regime and facilitate Mayor Allen Green’s political agendas.
Prior to this, he deflected blame from himself, axed the purchasing manager, and facilitated the exodus of his personally imported FCCMA management team, all with the lamentation of Allen Green and with the further insult of Green deflecting the blame to other council members, taxpayers, and long term employees that are left to pick up the pieces.
These millions of dollars of capital projects, including regulatory agency consent order projects, and myriads of other important projects are not being executed on schedule, and this is not because of a lack of due diligence, planning, or administrative facilitation by middle management or technical personnel, but because of an upper managerial administrative crevasse precipitated by the mayor’s failed special interest political machinations, his city manager’s inability to manage professionally while trying to maintain the mayor’s special interest agenda, and the incompetent special interest supporting FCCMA management team that Kisela imported to our city in order to support the mayor’s special interest agendas.
What this will amount to is that at the end of this fiscal year millions of dollars worth of capital projects and budgeted taxpayer dollars will have to carry over to the next fiscal year and run into the following year’s capital improvement program and budget. Their may be untold thousands of dollars in regulatory fines because of bottlenecked capital projects and further bottlenecks unless the city council abandons the old Allen Green paradigm and embraces a new paradigm that will bring holistic resolution to this implosion. This will cost the taxpayers millions of dollars because of Kisela’s management team’s insidious obfuscation of their malfeasance and of the unconscionable inability of them to account for the actual losses.
Their are actually people within the organization that understand this and are capable of solving these problems and getting the city back on track. These are people that embrace the new paradigm of transparency and open governance by the people. They are willing to step up under the right political leadership that is espoused by the city council and a new city manager or they are willing to support legitimate externally imported administrative management from the private sector that embraces this new paradigm and rewards and supports institutional knowledge and value from within the organization. It is unlikely that in the interim Allen Green or Greg Kisela will favorably identify and acknowledge such employees because while their is still a chance to conceal their malfeasance and resurrect the old special interest managerial paradigm they would prefer to select place holders as interim directors that will not question what is wrong, even if extremely incompetent, to hold down the fort until they can re-assemble another FCCMA special interest dream team.
Hopefully this will not be allowed to happen, even in the short term. If it does it will cause further implosion and serious collateral damage within the organization, because Mayor Allen Green’s desperate attempt to stem the tide, and forestall the new paradigm of open and transparent governance will inevitably fail. Our elected officials, our citizen stakeholders, and our brave employees need to mitigate this collateral damage and stop the mayor’s covert actions in their tracks. Power to the people!
Hermes,
It is apparent from your statement that there is perhaps more bad news for the taxpayers within the City. It would be best to get it all out in one gulp, become transparent and move forward. This is ridiculous. It has been one fiasco after another and that is not healthy nor will it create a productive environment for anyone involved. Honesty, and transparency, and a little respect from the activists who are forced to micro analyze your actions currently would promote a healthy team like atmosphere. If you win over the faith of activists, and educate them, and they team with you and share a common vision, life would be easier for all. What a wonderful City it could be. Hey Bob. There’s a solution as you summoned some. Are you on board with that?
Mr. Senior, I have not seen the citizens who show up at council meetings or send e mails to city government be disrespectful. There are some bloggers on this web site who may be in the area of being disrespectful, but as long as their comments are not civilly liable I understand they have such a right to voice their displeasure at the present state of our city government. Satire and making fun of public officials come with the job, but I probably can agree with you in some instances of unnecessary and disrespectful comments or pictures. And we should always be alert that anonymous writers can be putting forth disrespectful statements in the hope of producing a false perception that anti city hall advocates are a bunch of low breed. Some of us who disagree with how the city is run may live in trailer parks or low income neighborhoods while pro city hall advocates may be selling high priced condos. But I think we should be clear that Ted Noftall, Mark Schaefer, Newton White, Mike Gardner and Dianne Gardner have been respectful but perhaps somewhat disagreeable. The problems that prevail are disagreeable by nature.
I thought it was disrespectful as to how recently the mayor was to a city councilman who protested that the mayor was not allowing a citizen to speak before the city council.
But caution should be deployed in our some time heated exchanges. There are emotional issues at play here, and I hope everyone can handle .
I believe the citizen activists are awaiting for a political and managerial paradigm to emerge that is consistent with their vision of open governance. If this paradigm emerges on the city council and at City Hall the activists would be willing to partner with such a team and work towards common objectives that would emerge from open and improvisational collaboration. This kind of consensus agenda is that which fosters teamwork and cooperation. In this way mutual goals and objectives will be supported and facilitated by the citizens at large.
What may unfortunately occur on July 17th, is a desperate attempt to mobilize and reassemble an interim regime that will help Allen Green keep his finger on the pulse while he methodically reassembles another permanent management team that will proceed with his personal agenda. This will be evidenced by his attempt orchestrate and due damage control at the council meeting and his dismissiveness in shutting down any opposition or competing solutions from the split council or citizen activists. Hopefully Bob Ford and Drew Bastian will stand up and be counted and our citizen dignitaries such as Hank Schaffer, Ted Noftall, and the Gardiners will join these elected officials in demanding open and transparent governance.
It would not surprise me in the short term if Allen Green is able to resurrect some form of a dysfunctional interim management team at City Hall that he can control and direct. This may be the case in the short term, but the combination of his interim teams incompetency coupled with his own delusional perspective will only escalate the problems and exacerbate the implosion until the remainder of council will be forced to override him. I think the council needs to take charge and control what occurs in the interim and direct the selection of the permanent management team with the technical assistance of employees within the organization acting as a technical advisory board.
Unfortunately Allen Green may be able to manipulate events one last time for a reprise debacle. Their will be a lot of collateral damage if this is how this debacle plays out but this may be necessary to shake out all the snakes and clear the way for a new paradigm. Greg Kisela’s role will diminish week by week and his influence and commitment to Green’s agenda will also diminish until his assent becomes almost disingenuous. Kisela wants out of here before the volcano blows and he has navigated himself into a nice little soft landing. I predict the mayor will allow him to leave prior to his 60 day contractual obligation and Kisela will be more than glad to slip out the back door without taking a reputation beating.
This is a public message to Mayor Allen Green!
http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=Youtube+John+Lennon's+Power+To+The+People&qpvt=Youtube+John+Lennon%27s+Power+To+The+People&FORM=VDRE#view=detail&mid=53FFEBAF159D1F99E5F253FFEBAF159D1F99E5F2
Why Is This Idea Important?: We must go beyond the notion of more efficient command and control government to transforming and empowering self-government.
The Open Government Dialogue here suggests two different takes on how technology changes public governance. The first is that Internet technology makes government more efficient; the second is that technology completely transforms the democratic governing process.
This contrasts 20th century “command and control” with 21st century “open source” government and the best analogy would be Encyclopedia Britannica vs. Wikipedia. EB is (was?) a typical command and control, hierarchical, corporate institution. It provided the capital and coordination required to produce and distribute that physical product of encyclopedic volumes. EB has a CEO, a Board of Directors and an organizational structure of departments under a strict hierarchy. (Much like our federal government and bureaucracy.) It’s a 20th century top-down corporate governance model that reflected the technology of the time.
Wikipedia employs a radically different bottom-up model. It’s content is controlled by its users, there is no CEO or management hierarchy. It is not financed by shareholders or a complex ownership structure, but by grants and charitable contributions. Yet, it supplies the desired good so efficiently that it has obliterated the old model of command and control.
This suggests that eGov will take us far beyond making government more efficient to shifting power away from command and control to users (voters). This should make political leadership, parties, interest groups, etc. less relevant and more accountable to the public will. It also suggests that the current shift to bigger, more efficient centralized government control is a futile attempt to revitalize an obsolete model by tweaking it around the edges. But Wikipedia didn’t make Britannica more efficient – it annihilated it. The ultimate irony may be that the failure of 20th century command and control governance has yielded an odd nostalgia for more of the same. Hopefully the OGD can help us change direction – the debate over universal health care will be the prime test case.
Do you believe Allen Green can join us in this new paradigm of open governance? If this is the case let us extend a warm welcome to him. If this is not the case let us all bid him farewell and ask that he retire graciously along with the old paradigm that has run its course and is being replaced by its evolutionary predecessor.
Open Collaboration – The Next Economic Paradigm
In Collaboration, Economic Patterns, Wisdom of Crowds on April 28, 2011 at 10:25 pm
I’ve dedicated a lot of research over the last few years to understanding the deep trends that will define the next economy. As I’ve written elsewhere, the global economy goes through a creative-destructive cycle every 50 years. And now we’re in the midst of a collapsing paradigm that is soon to be replaced by something new.
In this article, I will explain what the new paradigm is and how it will impact every sector of society — including business, government, education, and basic research. The old economic paradigm was a service economy built on the digital communications revolution that began in the early 1970′s. It is winding down now as financial capital has decoupled from productive capital and the global speculative bubble has burst. The financial meltdown of 2008 had many causes, but its most important result is that our major societal institutions have stalled out and the funding models that drove the whole system no longer work properly.
This systemic shutdown requires a new paradigm for economic production, one that has been incubating in the minds of lead innovators for several years now and is just beginning to get recognized as the next model for the burgeoning new economy.
The new model is the Open Collaboration Paradigm. It goes by names like open source, crowdsourcing, open system design, collaborative production, open manufacturing, and open government.
This graphic provides a schematic representation to show how deeply the shift will go:
In a global economy based on open collaboration, we will see a radical departure from old institutional models. Value will not be measured in pure monetary terms as social capital is increasingly recognized for the vital role it plays in generating wealth for society. The ability to see and connect with people, resources, and institutional supports (also known as “social currency”) will shape where innovations occur and who benefits from the adoption of new technologies and ideas.
This will be a profoundly social economy, built on unprecedented capabilities to self-organize people and resources in the crowd. Social media will connect ideas, people, and institutions across porous boundaries that blur the inside/outside distinctions of yesterday’s companies and government agencies. Network connections will be the distribution channels across market sectors and radical transparency will be the new norm.
Another profound shift will occur in the realm of ownership. No longer will it be a viable investment strategy to horde intellectual property. Rapid innovation will happen in the crowd, outpacing the dense pools of talent in corporate research labs. Collaborative consumption will arise as a more robust business paradigm, where risk is distributed across a sea of users to preserve high-quality and vital services that individuals will not have to bear on their own.
The implications for business will be clear. Those who can leverage the wisdom of crowds for market research, product development, and efficient resource allocation will be more adept and agile in the face of rapid change. Those who build walls around themselves will fail to tap into the flow of knowledge and resources running rampant in the crowd.
Similarly, governments will have to become more transparent and responsive to their citizens, especially as changing circumstances and environmental threats demand that citizens participate in the creative process for urban design, policy-making, and community development. Alternative reality games (also known as “serious games”) will be utilized by municipalities to gather information and guidance from citizens with smart phones and portable computers. We will increasingly see traffic data, public health statistics, road conditions, and more gathered by citizens in near-to-real time as information becomes more immersive and dynamic.
Research has already begun to use open collaboration that goes beyond the halls of academia. NASA scientists have employed idle computing cycles to mine huge amounts of astronomical data in the search for extraterrestrial life for more than a decade. And researchers studying bird migration patterns depend on amateur scouts to cover the terrain with watchful eyes. Increasingly this collaborative approach to research will become the norm, as lay people attain higher levels of under-utilized knowledge in areas outside of their work and are able to shape research projects through their informal activities.
The era of “user generated content” and “prosumption” — where consumers of goods and services co-create what they will consume — is now a decade along in its evolution. We will increasingly see collaborative design and production of consumables across society.
In the education arena, we will see more curricula as shareware and an increased emphasis on multi-perspective teamwork as the necessary skills for engaging in collaborative projects. Expert/amateur boundaries have already blurred to the point where individuals can acquire graduate-level knowledge through self-directed learning on the internet. (I often joke that I received an informal PH.D. from Joe University for all my advanced knowledge.) The notion of distance learning will become quaint as in-person and virtual learning weave seamlessly together in open collaborative research endeavors. Lifetime learning will be a necessity for adapting to turbulent changes in the workplace. And active pedagogy — learning by doing with real-world applications — will become the standard teaching model, itself an incarnation of open collaborative design.
So get ready for the new economic paradigm. It is going to be profoundly disruptive to the status quo and will increasingly dominate market economies around the world. I have studied these trends for several years now and mastered the skills necessary to engage crowds in open collaborative design. This was my modus operandi through two successful crowdfunding campaigns (a Progressive Strategy Handbook and a Crowdfunding Manual for Social Movements) and the groundbreaking activities facilitated through my leadership with Seattle Innovators in late 2009 and 2010.
Please let me know if you’d like help opening up your design/production process with principles of collaborative design. I look forward to assisting you in the birth of new waves of market creation in the years to come.
http://www.chaoticripple.com/2011/open-collaboration-paradigm/
This is a public message to Allen Green, Don Burnette, and Buddy Lacour sent from the hierophant of the new paradigm of open and transparent governance.
http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=Youtube+Steppenwolf+Monster&qpvt=Youtube+Steppenwolf+Monster&FORM=VDRE#view=detail&mid=F9C071B8921C4C1A73E5F9C07188921C4C1A73E5
I read in today’s News Journal that in New Orleans, former Mayor Ray Nagin received a 10 year prison sentence charged with bribery, money laundering, fraud and tax violations stemming from his two terms as New Orleans Mayor.
He started out as a Rock Star and he ended up as just another crass corrupt politician, turning out to be a feckless Mayor.
Hank, Hermes, et al……………….
“Whenever the people are well informed, they can be trusted with their own government; that whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them to rights.”–Thomas Jefferson, January 8, 1789)
I believe that what Jefferson said many years ago is still true today. The common sense judgement and overriding notions of fairness that I find in the vast majority of people in Port Orange can be relied on to make good decisions if given open and unbiased presentations of fact. I love to see differing opinions based on the facts–it makes me think. I absolutely despise opinions based on distortions of fact–it makes it impossible to think.
Mike Gardner
618 Ruth St
Port Orange, FL 32127
386-527-1959
manddgardner@cfl.rr.com
Will Mayor Allen Green take a trip to the Magical Theater of the mind; “Not For Everybody, For Madmen Only”.
http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=Youtube+Herman+Hess+Steppenwolf+With+Max+Von+Sidow&qpvt=Youtube+Herman+Hess+Steppenwolf+With+Max+Von+Sidow&FORM=VDRE#view=detail&mid=10E79EA9544E5490651410E79EA95A4E54906514
I will share a vision with you that I received from Mescalito in the nagual. The vision that I saw was that of the council meeting on July 17th. At the meeting the mayor and the council agree to let the city manager Greg Kisela leave sooner than what is required in his contract so that he can take his golden parachute with him sooner for his soft landing in Destin. They say many disingenuous things about how good a job he has done and what excellent service he has provided in an attempt to be politically correct and to usher him out the door without a scandal. This will further injure the psyche’s of many employees that have been loyal to the city and disenfranchised by the mayor and this manager. Hopefully after this, the city council will be committed to healing those that have been abused and recognizing loyalty and value. If this is not the case than the nagual will demand justice and balance, and this will precipitate upon the tonal.