I feel guilty for commenting on Dunwoody’s problems, now that the problems have jumped back over the new city limits into Doraville. Or maybe Doraville has some sort of annual tradition we’re trying to maintain. I heard a saying about this when I was in France last month: “plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose”.
This time it’s city council member Bob Roche on a mission to fire a city employee. I don’t know the details of city personnel policies, so there may be some reason that he thinks Luke Howe needs to be fired over the Mayor’s head. He is, however, keeping this reason moderately secret, having apparently only shared it with council member Pam Fleming (who agrees with him) and Mayor Jenkins (who doesn’t). He had the item placed on the agenda for the work meeting, noted aloud that he had requested it be placed last (which it wasn’t), and then refused to say anything about it. His excuse for this was that he wanted a court reporter present for his accusations, while the work session only had an audiotape and an unofficial video recording of the proceedings. Doraville’s manner of business made it legal to carry this agenda item over to the official voting meeting, despite the city attorney saying that this was not strictly according to Robert’s Rules of Order. He said that while it was legal, he was not issuing an opinion that it was proper or ethical behavior, especially with yet another employment issue on the line.
Several city council members asked for more information, with Mrs. Pittman standing out with direct questions and several statements that she felt uncomfortable with such an approach to management of city employees. Mr. Roche was unmoved, though, and refused to divulge any information (I believe not even confirming that Mr. Howe was the target, although it was clear in the discussion). The result of all of this is that on August 4th, Doraville is scheduled to have another Star Chamber trial of an employee, for unstated crimes against humanity, or at least against Mr. Roche.
I can envision several very good reasons for dismissing Luke Howe. Mr. Roche’s method of attempting to fire him makes me doubt that any of these good reasons exist.
Luke Howe is not some sort of magician who has made Doraville into a wonderland in a few short months. He has, however, helped the mayor and the council begin to accomplish one task that was already several years overdue — the new public face for the city, the website. We have a very small city, with nevertheless a lot of things going on. We need to give ourselves a tool to allow a small city government be very efficient in handling information, especially in delivering information to the citizens (council meeting minutes, new laws, changes or proposed changes in public services, police reports), and receiving information from the citizens (opinions, need for action, plaudits and complaints, requesting changes in public services like recycling). A web interface can allow this to happen.
The people of Doraville chose Mayor Jenkins as our mayor despite his apparent lack of aggressive work towards such progressive projects. I like to think we elected Mayor Jenkins for other aspects of his work, and not specifically to refuse this chance for more efficient city government. Now that we’ve chosen him, we still need to get some of these projects done, to get our government cheaper, more efficient, and more modern. The mayor and council chose a few months ago to help do this by hiring a special assistant for the mayor, Mr. Howe.
Mr. Howe has done a fantastic job organizing the website. I know there are still some people in the city who are afraid of things like this, but I suspect that most people reading this post understand how such a tool can actually mean better results for citizens with less work by city employees.
I don’t know how Mr. Howe’s job was defined by the council. We have a habit of very poorly-defined jobs, even hiring several city employees as contractors with apparently no job description. But Mr. Howe has certainly helped the mayor meet MY understanding of their job, and done it well enough to earn a shot at continuing to his next task in this job. We have many tasks left to bring us nearer the 21st century, such as better and more legal job descriptions for city employees (to protect them and the city), eliminating take-home cars for city employees or reporting them to the IRS as part of their compensation, hiring a city planner and finishing our current round of zoning and city planning.
Urgently, we need to convince the areas on our border that the police protection from Doraville is obviously better than DeKalb County’s, and that our city government might already be better and more responsive than DeKalb County’s. We even have a church in the county on our border that refuses to allow a condition into their zoning eliminating pornography from what can be produced. The county is also refusing to add that condition. Bonita Hoffmeister has worked mostly by herself to at least shine a little light on this ridiculous situation.
I don’t see any way that getting rid of Luke Howe makes these tasks any easier or any closer to happening. There are a lot of ways that firing him makes these tasks even harder to accomplish. If he has been doing real evil in his job, if he has been selling Doraville’s military secrets to Chamblee, then Mr. Roche needed to present this evidence a month ago so the council could make a decision. The way he’s actually doing it makes it seem like a carbon copy of last year’s party with Chief King, although he has targeted Mr. Howe, a less popular figure than Messrs. Hart, Spangler, and Lowe picked. I don’t want to reward the city council members for choosing less popular employees to bully. I also don’t want to strengthen the factions that seem to be forming on some issues, so I won’t list the council members who are acting like grown-ups on this issue, although it was fairly easy to see at the meeting. Even with his faction, it looked like at best Mr. Roche would have a 3-3 council, and he would need to provide something other than he has told the mayor already to get the tiebreaking vote.
Come to the meeting on 8/4 and be part of city government! Especially any of you in the potential annexation areas, who have doubts about taking part in a small city government, come on out and see how you can make a difference for better government!
Some would describe excessive Council direct involvement in personnel matters better or more properly handled by the executive as micromanaging or interference.
Fortunately there’s no municipal accreditation similiar to that associated with schools because the city would probably be placed on probation by the accrediting agency if this turns out to be another tempest in a teapot.
SHOCKING!! LOL!!
So was it negative campaigning or just telling the truth?
[...] Things have been a little quiet on the Dora-Blog. But now Bubba Rich laments that the bad times have come back to Doraville, that touch of country in the city. Bookmark [...]
I have heard indirectly that this matter was discussed at city hall outside the formal meeting. The Georgia Municipal Association (GMA) intervened to arbitrate between Mr. Roche and Mr. Howe. This intervention is not expected to endure long, though, so we can look forward to Mr. Roche raising this issue again. However, the longer he lets it dribble on like this really makes me doubt the seriousness of his objection.
If Mr. Howe is committing any serious infractions of the trust placed in him, then Mr. Roche is complicit in it with his continued silence, or “almost silence” with the occasional slip of something that sounds like information. I hope that he and Mr. Howe can resolve whatever this difference is, so that Doraville can get back to sloooow but nearly steady progress.
I’m curious to see what the charges were and how much we spent on having a professional mediator “work it out” for Mr. Roche. The charges should become public record 10 days after they were submitted to the City for action (so I assume, at most, 10 days after the mediation date). No one brought it up at the meeting last night.
Can the mayor approve this sort of unusual expenditure by himself, without the approval of the city council? What is the size of the mayor’s discretionary budget?
I don’t have a problem with him controlling day-to-day expenses, I’m just curious about the mechanism.
This is getting ridiculous. Can we just fire everyone? Doraville’s leadership makes the Clayton County school board like competent…
I’ve heard the Mayor state (though not on this issue of course) that he can spend up to $5,000 without Council approval.
The mayor can spend up to 5K which is the threshold before an RFP is required. Which is the logic the City uses in not getting bids for our accounting/IT services every year…MIS Consulting submits weekly invoices so each one always falls under the 5K limit.
I did make an open records request today for the list of complaints that Mr. Roche formulated against Luke.
That seems like an extremely dishonest way for the council to escape its duty. It should definitely be limited to $5,000 per year (or month) or $5,000 per recipient of payment per year.
Since I haven’t heard anything yet about reporting the vehicles to the IRS, I’m guessing they have used some similar sort of creative accounting. The IRS has more lawyers and more determination than the taxpayers of Doraville, though.
Bubba, it’s standard operating procedure in police work for officers to take their cars home, and the Chief has explained some very good reasons why the particular officers do so, which really do include public safety reasons. Guess you missed his explanation.
Additionally, the city records are audited yearly by an outside auditor. Is it safe to assume that the city’s tax return also comes under scrutiny? I dunno, but I’m just sayin’.
IO:
You’ve obviously missed the other discussions on this subject, I’m strongly in favor of officers taking cars home.
We’re discussing other employees, who get the car as an addition to their income, and don’t ever use it for any city service.
It is quite possible that the city is paying income tax on these cars itself. I look at that as yet ANOTHER thousands of dollars of benefits to certain special city employees, all paid for out of our pockets. I don’t know what the tax issues would be if the city somehow claimed that these vehicles were NOT a benefit to those employees. The city itself has not been able to dig up the information about how these cars are reported to the IRS in a couple of months of digging. It smells pretty rotten. It may be that the city doesn’t want to publicize the value of this additional benefit we’re paying for.
Yes, Bubba, I have obviously missed the other discussions on this subject where you and/or others have given an opinion. If it’s not in this blog or in council meetings, I wouldn’t know about it.
I’d be very surprised if all city vehicles weren’t reported on the city’s tax returns and depreciated, in which case, the city would NOT be paying tax on the vehicles; they’d be claiming deductions.
It is pointless to respond to those who aim to vandalize the reputations of good people and the political process; their words speak for themselves.
Despite these people and those who condone their behavior, we have not and will not waver. We are committed to following the truth wherever it leads and crafting sensible policies to move Doraville forward in these critical times.
Thanks to all who sent messages of support,
Bob Roche
Bob:
I can understand your not responding to some of the comments, but if you think something I said in the initial post above was unfair or untrue, I’d be really interested in knowing it. Or if you could address any of the comments I made above about the benefits Mr. Howe has brought to the city, I’d appreciate that, too.
You and councilmember Fleming seemed pretty sure that you had some very damning information about Mr. Howe at the meeting a few weeks ago. Not only did you refuse to reveal this information to the audience (which you would be required to do as part of your Open Meetings responsibilities), but you had only revealed this information to Mayor Jenkins. If it is something detrimental to the city of Doraville, you should probably reveal it to Mrs. Pittman, Mrs. Alexander, and Mr. Bates. Mayor Jenkins did not seem to think you had a very urgent matter at that meeting, though.
You refer to policies for Doraville above. I’m not quite sure which policies you have proposed for Doraville that you think other people are opposing you on. The only thing you mentioned at the work session was firing Mr. Howe and giving other city employees larger raises.
I personally believe that if those are your two big priorities for Doraville, we need to get better job descriptions for the employees in question, to protect the employees, the city, and to give managers something to evaluate performance against.
I’d like to remind people to please maintain a civil tone in this and any other discussion on this site. If you can’t get your point across without resorting to name-calling, then please keep it to yourself. If you do choose to resort to childish name-calling, don’t be surprised if your comment is deleted and you are banned from the site.
OK, I will ask nicely.
I’m a homeowner and taxpayer who resides in Doraville.
Bob Roche, what problem or problems do you have with Mr.Howe and why do you want to fire him?
Unfortunately, I haven’t had the time to attend work secessions and / or Council meetings and I’m sure a lot of other fellow Doravillians don’t either. It is rather apparent others are quite upset with your modivations towards Mr. Howe.
Mr. Roche you are a public servant elected into office by a majority of the Doraville population and your wages and benefits are paid by the people of Doraville. I think when asked a direct question by a citizen, an answer should be given. If some of the posts on this site may appear to be somewhat hostile it’s probably because you will not answer a direct question? Obviously, there is some frustration exhibited and, to me, you are bringing this all upon yourself by not giving an explaination.
Siting “It is pointless to respond to those who aim to vandalize the reputations of good people and the political process; their words speak for themselves.” is evading the issue. The issue is, why do you have a problem with Mr. Howe and why do you want to have him fired? This is not a hostile question about your integrity or the political process Mr. Roche, it’s a question only you know the answer to.
Gordon,
No one has heard any response from Mr. Roche, including some councilmembers who have asked.
I did make an open records request. As it is a personnel issue, there is a 10-day wait period. The City Clerk informed me that the 10-days would start once they receive a final report from the mediator that was hired to to deal with Mr. Roche’s issues.
I have requested a copy of both the list of complaints by Mr. Roche against Mr. Howe and the final report from the mediator.
Councilman Roche, it’s ironic you used the phrase “to those who aim to vandalize the reputation of good people”, I’m curious as to how you would catagorize your accusations towards Mr.Howe? From what I gather, you are trying to fire him, which would be a very serious action towards Mr.Howe. So do you feel you are making these accusations in the best interest of the citizens of Doraville? And what “critical times”?
Apparently, many are pleased with Mr. Howes’ contribution to the new official Doraville website. So understandibly there is quite a bit of confusion. If I remember correctly, Councilmen Roche, you felt you would be the peace keeper and mediator of City Council if elected to office. Now it appears we needed a mediator to take care of you.
Again, there are many people who are very confused by your actions, especially since you obviously have no regard for the people who ask the questions. So, maybe, these people are offended as well.
“Councilman Roche, it’s ironic you used the phrase “to those who aim to vandalize the reputation of good people”, I’m curious as to how you would catagorize your accusations towards Mr.Howe?”
TOUCHE’, Gordon. Sounds like an attempt to vandalize Luke’s reputation without backing it up whatsoever — ergo, the pot calling the kettle . . . ?
Roche has greatly sunken in my esteem throughout these past few days.
“The political process” to which he refers sounds just like more politicking.
When he was “politicking” for office and some were grousing because Roche really didn’t “say anything,” I stuck up for the man, for some reason. Now I see their points . . .
And Councilman Roche, what about “Thanks to all who sent messages of support”? Does that statement mean the people who sent you “messages of support” know the reason you want to fire Mr. Howe, meaning if you support me I will answer your questions and if you don’t support me I will shut you out; or does it mean the people who sent you “messages of support” don’t know the reasons for wanting to fire Mr. Howe, but they support you anyway? And, if you really think about it, any answer to either question really isn’t in the best interest of the entire Doraville citizenship at large.
It’s way past time to explain yourself Councilman Roche, because you have brought the issue into the public domain by not accepting the Mayors decision on the matter and bringing it before City Council.