Three Chandler City Council links - please vote Tuesday!
Three key links related to Chandler City Council politics and a closing comment:
1. City Council puts hiring of city manager on hold - Fuels rumors that ousted Pentz may be rehired
Mayor Dunn and others in the old-boy-network hoping to see Jeff Weninger be elected have a vested interest in drumming up more anger and divisiveness about the issue. It's no coincidence that Ray Pilara, the initiator of the Recall effort, is a volunteer on Weninger's campaign.
They all know that by lobbying for the Recall and drumming up agitation about Pentz, it's the most effective way to get voters to go to the polls and vote for Weninger, who otherwise would not, in my opinion, be competitive with the other more qualified candidates Donovan and Jackson.
The sad thing is, this kind of thing usually works, unless people go to the polls to specifically reject this kind of wedge-issue politicking. But Chandler, Arizona has seen far too much of this kind of thing!
Please vote on Tuesday for Donovan and Jackson.
1. City Council puts hiring of city manager on hold - Fuels rumors that ousted Pentz may be rehired
Recruitment of a new Chandler city manager is on hold until next month, fueling speculation that a new City Council might rehire ousted manager Mark Pentz.2. Budget reflects changing focus - unanimous Council vote
Despite the sometimes vehement differences of opinion that have divided Chandler City Council members in recent months, Mayor Boyd Dunn said the council's support for the city's proposed $850.5 million budget appears to be unanimous.3. Anger to draw more to polls?
If true, considering the anti-City Council fallout caused by the recent forced resignation of City Manager Mark Pentz, Chandler can count on seeing a marked increase in ballot-punching when the city holds its latest round of run-off elections May 16.As to this last article, it is exactly what I've been talking about lately.
That would be a positive upshot, according to Chandler Mayor Boyd Dunn.
Mayor Dunn and others in the old-boy-network hoping to see Jeff Weninger be elected have a vested interest in drumming up more anger and divisiveness about the issue. It's no coincidence that Ray Pilara, the initiator of the Recall effort, is a volunteer on Weninger's campaign.
They all know that by lobbying for the Recall and drumming up agitation about Pentz, it's the most effective way to get voters to go to the polls and vote for Weninger, who otherwise would not, in my opinion, be competitive with the other more qualified candidates Donovan and Jackson.
The sad thing is, this kind of thing usually works, unless people go to the polls to specifically reject this kind of wedge-issue politicking. But Chandler, Arizona has seen far too much of this kind of thing!
Please vote on Tuesday for Donovan and Jackson.
posted by Geo at 8:11 AM
2 Comments:
I've been disappointed by your analysis of the firing of the city manager. I just don't think you're in touch with what's really going on. Did you watch the rest of the meeting? How can you excuse that behavior?
And you’re taking what Matt Orlando says at face value? Geesh! “From Matt’s reading of the 153 emails. . . he suggests that there are parallels in the wording and argumentative structure. . . suggesting that there may have been a concerted email effort. . .” I can assure you that my email was heartfelt and not generated by some sort of conspiracy. Good grief! So what that many people have used the ‘gang of four’ moniker?—It was just too easy and apropos. I didn’t use it in my email to the Mayor and Council, but I’ve used it plenty since. You’ve missed out on the barrage of letters to the editors of all the local newspapers condemning the actions of these four. Plenty of outraged people who have no personal interest in the matter, despite what Orlando and Sepulveda would like you to believe. Perhaps I should send them to you, but I don’t think it would really matter. You’ve drawn your conclusion, and perhaps not surprisingly, it seems to fall along party lines.
And perhaps you haven’t watched that part of the video, but it is CLEAR that Pentz was indeed forced out. Pentz and his lawyer only offered the ‘separation agreement’ to the council in the event that they didn’t have the votes to keep him. I feel certain that the only reason they accepted the agreement was that it protected them from a potential lawsuit(s), which many of us who watched the fiasco felt was a reasonable expectation.
I sincerely hope the city is able to hire Pentz back, and Chandler's reputation recovers from this embarrassing episode.
Hi AM,
Thanks for your comments. I appreciate there's a lot of emotion stirred up over all of this. I think that's what I've been trying to address - that a lot of people are letting their emotions determine their actions, even when it's clear that some key people have been instrumental in provoking the issue and playing on these emotions.
For what it's worth, I don't take anything that anybody says at face value unless they've proven their trustworthiness or can back up what they say with facts. Not to be too indelicate, but that includes you, any particular council member, Ray Pilara or anyone else that comments on this blog.
Call that cynical, but it comes from significant life experience in leading teams and working with very controversial matters. It's an especially relevant lesson in politics. I've learned to fact check and conduct my own research and I do this not only so I can be confident of my conclusions, but so I can be confident in sharing my conclusions with others. I don't like relying on just impressions unfounded by significant corroboration by facts. And the frenzy of a mob, however vigorously heartfelt, does not substitute for corroborating facts, in my mind.
So I've done the diligence to ferret out a lot of details behind the scenes on this whole issue. And it is based on that research - not relying on what went on in one meeting - upon which I've based my evaluation.
I've seen many of the letters from folks who are upset. I don't doubt that many of them feel their outrage to be justified, springing forth pure from their own well of untainted moral indignation and keen, unquestionable discernment.
But what I have also learned in my life is that it doesn't take much effort to stir up dissent - indeed, it seems the easiest thing to do in a group. And once it's done, the dissenters imagine themselves to be righteous, never imagining that they're involved in an emotional game that's been played as long as humans have been gathering in groups.
Indeed, some people are especially adept at playing that game. We call them politicians.
And when politicians play that game in order to provoke discord in the community for partisan advantage, we call them demagogues and say they're engaging in divisive, wedge issue politicking.
And when people willingly benefit from demagoguic politicking, we generally call them unprincipled.
So yes, there's a lot of anger out there. A lot of folks would like to believe that Orlando, Sepulveda, Wallace and Westerbrooks are demons while Pentz, Dunn and Caccamo are pure as the driven snow. Well, I'd like to think that you and I have learned more about human nature than to swallow that premise whole.
Finally, as for having drawn my conclusions, I don't think it's too early to be voicing the concerns I have. I mean, if you've been following my blog, you know I hesitated a long time before drawing my initial broad strokes of what was going on. Indeed, as my readers know, I've gone out of my way to provide information, links and comments that allow folks to see both sides of the issue (including posting the video you sent me).
And it was only after I'd done the diligence of following up and researching and talking with a lot of folks - some of them privately and not reflected on this blog - that I became firmly convinced that the black-and-white demonization of Orlando and Sepulveda was a politically motivated fabrication and that much more was going on behind the scenes.
Surely if my having drawn conclusions at so late a date and after having done so much diligence disturbs you, I would think it should be far more distressing to you that some people - including candidate Jeff Weninger - evidently had their minds made up long, long before the Pentz review meeting even took place.
Yet I don't hear you criticizing their certitude on the issue at such an early date, which, I notice, falls along strictly partisan lines.
Some folks' silence in this regard speaks volumes, indeed.
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