Time for death with dignity?

The current free-for-all taking place between the sitting mayor, the dumped mayor and the city council raises a relevant question: Is it time for the City of Pacific to throw in the towel? Maybe we should just take the patient off life support and let Pacific die with dignity.

Dignity is a rare commodity in Pacific. You’re not going to find much evidence of it in the preceding blogs on this page, unless you think porn, threats, insults, character assassination, intrigue, dominating behavior and the like are an expression of respect. From what I’ve read in the Pacific City Signal (http://pacificcitysignal.tumblr.com/), it appears that the council has resorted to a vote of no confidence in order to engineer an end run around Mayor Cy Sun, who reportedly walked out of a city council meeting in response. (A lingering question in my mind is how the council was able to act with such unanimity without deliberating this approach in public. How do you do that, given the dictates of the state’s open meetings law?) One  issue that vexed the council involved trying to figure out how to handle the failure of the city to administer a grant. It’s hard to administer grants, when key department heads bailed like rats leaving a sinking ship – which is what any intelligent rat would do. 

Rich Hildreth (who continues to use an e-mail address implying he thinks he is still mayor) weighed in, blaming his successor for not being able to maintain the glowing legacy Hildreth left behind. Apparently a slow learner, Hildreth hasn’t yet grasped that the voters were only too glad to boot him in favor of a  write-in candidate who demonstrated no skills for running the operation and made it clear that he intended to drain the swamp. 

How smart does someone have to be to understand what’s happening here?

After 12 years of amateur night, with the final eight being dominated by a self-serving public official who ran the city as if it were Pee Wee’s Playhouse, the house of cards is imploding.

Pay no attention to the finger pointing, because it’s unnecessary. Virtually everyone who held public office for the last eight years shares the blame. They not only allowed the deterioration to continue – they grew a political culture which no intelligent person would want to be a part of.

An honest, decent, assertive, thoughtful person who understands the consequences of political actions, is willing to insist on proper ethical conduct and who would take time to ask the right questions, to make sure that others were kept informed and who would take the type of necessary action that the public would respect, wouldn’t feel comfortable in this government. Richard Hildreth’s conduct and his tolerance for improper behavior by city employees, and the council’s willingness to abide that approach created a house of cards that was guaranteed to collapse in time. Anyone who tries to prop it up will have to deal with the contractors who built this house. Is there anyone out there who thinks that would work?

If the City of Pacific survives – and I think that is a big "if" – it will take years, perhaps a generation, before the right group of personalities can come together to form a government worthy of the name. That's highly unlikely, because Pacific is no longer a "community." It is an accidental congregation of individuals with no commonalities that could lead to the emergency of leaders who could have a  common vision that can be shared by the voters.

Here’s a challenge for you: Sit down and make a list of reasons why a city should exist where Pacific is now.