What the Hell Does Staff Even Do?
At the last Parks and Recreation Commission meeting, City Staff asked the commission to approve a “Parks and Recreation Master Plan” on which they wanted to spend “$236,295 + $51,750 for an optional arts component”.
What that amounts to is over 1/4 of a Million smackers so a consulting firm can put together a plan for how to do the jobs that we pay staff to do year in and year out. Here’s staff’s actual justification for why we need to pay for this “master plan”:
“Without a current masterplan, making decisions on what communities need in parks and amenities becomes very difficult. A large component of the master plan process is to ask the community what is important.”
Imagine sucking at your job so hard that you need to hire a consult to tell you how to prioritize your decision making process. They claim they need to hire somebody to talk to us plebs because, well, I assume that the denizens of the Crystal Palace that is City Hall might fear being dirtied and despoiled by the stain of the common folk.
The 2020 numbers aren’t up on Transparent California but as of 2019 (before they shitcanned the P&R Director Hugo Curiel), we were spending approximately $1,167,647.43 a year on staff. That’s in one year and doesn’t count the part timers who were mostly laid off in 2020.
That’s over a million dollars a year on payroll for people who don’t know how to prioritize or manage your parks. And no, I’m not being mean – they themselves asked to spend over $236k so SOMEBODY ELSE could “ask the community what is important”.
What, the ever loving hell, do these people actually do? They don’t write grants because we hire consultants & vendors for that. They don’t design parks because we hire consultants and vendors for that. They don’t build parks because… yup – vendors and consultants. Hell, the funding for the parks largely comes from the Park Dwelling Fees which is a byproduct of what the Planning Department does so you can’t even credit P&R for THAT.
Every time we look around, City Hall is trying to throw more and more money at people to do the work of the very people inside City Hall because gosh darn it, it’s just so hard to put up a survey or ask a question on Facebook. So instead we need a connected vendor to wine and dine staff (to get the contract) so they can post on Nextdoor and hold useless “community meetings” where they spend their days trying to sell people on things they never wanted, asked for or need. This is how the Fox Block study session included the ridiculous “street car” and how we got a paid parking pilot in downtown.
Thankfully sound minds prevailed and this nonsense was voted down by the P&R commission but expect staff to take it straight to City Council and for the complicit council to approve this payout because if there’s one thing staff IS good at it – it’s convincing the idiots on the dais that staff is too inept to do their jobs but somehow too necessary to just outsource entirely.
Maybe some day enough residents will figure out how they’re getting screwed by these incompetent asshats at City Hall and demand accountability of our “elected leaders” but don’t count on it.
Those TPS Reports don’t write themselves…
The problem is that most government workers really don’t know how to do anything. The Engineering Departments are staffed with lots of “professional engineers” who have never spent 30 minutes on a construction site. They take their cut of the project budget for “administration” and then we have to pay for “construction managers” like the lamentable Griffin Structures just because they have contributed to Shawm Nelson or Jennifer Fitzgerald.
The public doesn’t really know how to do anything (in a collective sense), either. Have you met them? It’s kind of a stupid picture.
That group looks a little top-heavy, no? Six managers and supervisors for 5 underlings. What’s wrong with this picture? And what happened to that Parks SUV that crashed and rolled over.
And it got that way because 99% of City Managers and City Councilmembers always take the path of least resistance and care more about being liked than being respected and successful.
Perfect summation.
If you want to measure the uselessness of this department you need go no further than the incompetent drunkard Joe Felz who somehow managed to rise to the top of this swamp.
A few of those names have retired or left the city. A few of them actually work hard when they have work to do. Parks & Rec’s functions really don’t require a lot of staff. Virtually every position can be contracted out.
A Director of Parks & Recreation should not be making $150k + benefits. It’s a position obtained by political a$$kissing, any idiot can do that job. This is another fine example why the city is going bankrupt.
I saw Shady Silva & his corrupt wife strolling around Fullerton like they they were F&@king royalty. City Council members all have their own selfish agendas and don’t care about the city or it’s residents.
They always entertain themselves by outdumbing one another.
The Silvas are like toilet paper — cheap, thin, covered in shit and easily replaced.
YOU are here to serve US! Now shut up and sit down while we take more of your $ and give you even less in return.
Alice Loya is still there because she is so devious that the parade of City Managers keep her in charge of plotting how to fuck people who try to circumvent the bureaucratic know-it-alls that fall upward. That piggy bitch is the next one that is going to get whacked.
You could eliminate the entire P&R staff and there would be no real effect on the community.
I really do wonder why Curiel suddenly left/was kicked out.
Never see city workers out in the field.. Where to be found?