Government’s Stupid Priorities – Survey Edition

The city is once again trying to figure out how to do their jobs, this time by holding a “community stakeholder survey“. I kid you not. They want us t0 take a survey so they can figure out what it is they’re supposed to do be up there in City Hall.

From the website:

Over a year ago, the City held its first strategic planning session to introduce the concept of strategic planning and development of Priority Policy Statements. Strategic Planning is a well established process to help local governments (and private sector businesses) conduct an assessment and set goals and objectives for use of their available resources. The effort last year focused on establishing three Priority Policy Statements — Fiscal and Organizational Stability, Public Safety, and Infrastructure and City Assets.

For the next strategic planning session, the City will conduct a community stakeholder survey prior to working with the City Council to develop Mission and Vision statements, and ultimately set goals to implement the Priority Policy Statements.

They had a strategic planning session and they came to the conclusion that they needed Fiscal and Organizational Stability (which we don’t have), Public Safety (which we can’t afford), and Infrastructure and City Assets (which we don’t maintain and keep selling).

If you asked them BEFORE that planning session what their priorities were supposed to be do you think the answers would have been materially different?

Of course not. So now, after spending time and money for no point, we get to move to Round Two in the dog and pony show of figure out how government is supposed to work.

This is the type of thing a business does when a disrupter comes in and they lose market share or when a business is first starting – not something a government should be doing because they’re too bought and paid for to remember the point of a municipal government.

“Priority Policy Statements”. What a joke.

How many staff hours are wasted on crap like this? You want to know what the job of the city is? Do the things you’re paid to do – like fix our damn roads you nitwits.

You tax us specifically to do some things and to maintain other things. While government apologists and statists preen that “taxes are the price we pay to live in a civilized society” the city sure make it impossible to be civilized when the very streets we drive on cause road rage.

City Staff’s / Council’s job is to read and balance a budget and then prioritize the things we citizens cannot do on our own – like paving damn roads.

That’s basically it. We allegedly form governments to do things we cannot do on our own so that’s what needs to be done.

You don’t need a survey and to hold meetings to figure out these priorities. That’s just a dodge to avoid doing actual hard work. This is the TPS report system of government and everybody who came up with and supports this process should be ashamed of themselves.

But by all means I encourage everybody to take the survey and give the city an earful, they deserve it and it doesn’t really matter anyways. This city is immune to actual criticisms or stakeholder input. Hell, our rotating Chiefs of Police turn a blind eye to life safety issues if it means appeasing a favored bar owner. That should give you a barometer for our complacent and corrupt Fullerton is from top to bottom.