Snow Blind
“Good luck summarizing that” I said to QCTimes reporter Brian Wellner as Saturday’s strategic planning worksession concluded. Mayor Gluba and the City Council had devoted another three hours to an open discussion of our challenges and opportunities and the Times and WQAD were there to report on the session. We had consensus on sixteen strategies, had discussed dozens of potential action items and put a sizable dent in the region’s coffee and Danish supply. Oh, and Public Works Director Mike Clarke said something that lasted about twenty seconds.
Kaleidoscopes are great fun. They take something as straight and true as light and bend it into mesmerizing patterns. Colorful. Constantly changing. Absolutely delightful. The visual equivalent, really, of a good newspaper. So long as enough light gets through.
Let me be clear about this. I didn’t start this with my amiable comment to Brian by accident. It is difficult to summarize something as complex as the Mayor and Council discussed on Saturday. I know because I had to assemble the powerpoint presentation into something that (hopefully) had some semblance of structure and cohesion. After the meeting, the best I could do was to post the amended powerpoint. That one slide is repeated three times is also not by accident. The three broad strategic goals of welcoming investment, supporting talent and enhancing quality of life is the outline of the story, as it was presented.
Outlines need details so Brian did what a good reporter does; he filled some in. The challenge in doing so is when you ask someone about something someone said at a meeting the responding someone was not at, something gets lost in translation. The kaleidoscope turns a little. That response gets written, edited, headlined and published, and the kaleidoscope turns some more. People who weren’t at the meeting read it, debate it, comment on it and the kaleidoscope is now generating its own heat from the friction of spinning.
Saturday’s work leads to Sunday work when Quad City Times Letter Writer of the Year Dan Ebener e-mails and asks if he can write a letter to the editor on what was missed in Sunday’s story. Sure, I say. It is not like Dan gave up his First Amendment rights when he signed on to help the City with the strategic planning meetings. Whether the Times publishes the letter or not is yet to be determined, but you could see today’s editorial coming as soon as you read Sunday’s headline. The twenty seconds of what Public Works Director Mike Clarke said at Saturday’s meeting has somehow been turned to be bad planning, an attack on labor and indifference to public safety.
It is none of those things. No one is suggesting on-duty firefighters be placed in snow plows.
Under the heading of “Supporting Talent”, we discussed a number of ways to enhance a “Vital, 21st Century City Workforce”. Those were the words on the screen. Supporting a vital, talented 21st Century City workforce is an entirely positive undertaking. We expect to do just that, in a positive manner, with a focus on wellness, training and collaboration. Those were the words on the screen, along with strengthening public safety. We are at the bargaining tables, right now, with five of our six bargaining groups and we expect to succeed (as we have in the past) with a collaborative approach that is respectful of the tremendous value our employees bring to their jobs every day.
Davenport didn’t get to be the first City in America with fully accredited front-line services through disrespect of our employees or dividing problems into “labor” or “management”, as today’s editorial suggests should be the case.
We fail or succeed as a team, and that spirit has to be the guiding light moving us forward.
