Oddjob - Of course, you're welcome to your opinion as to my motivation for raising the issue of John Uden's interruption of the city clerk as though he were somehow presiding over the city council meeting. I was simply pointing out a common overreach by a member of council.
However, when it comes to speculation over the deputy city clerk matter, it would helpful if your opinion were more informed. There are job descriptions for every position with the city, following review and adoption by the city council's human resources(HR) committee. The deputy city clerk position was created well over a decade ago and has been regularly staffed until, evidently, just recently.
It would be one thing if the HR committee had decided to modify that position description in a properly noticed and recorded
public meeting but it's quite another for the mayor to ask the council to back his plan without details on Aug. 14, to inform the city clerk that the position would be filled from Jan. through June on Aug. 28, for the council to fund the position in the annual budget, and then for the mayor to announce during the last council meeting on Jan. 8 that the position couldn't be filled because a new deputy city clerk job description "was just finalized on Friday"(Jan. 4), after he had just informed the city clerk by e-mail that he had no intention of backfilling the position at all on Jan. 2!
1. If the mayor had no intention of filling the position in 2013, then why did he agree that he would?
2. If the city council had no intention of funding the position in 2013, then why did it approve an annual budget that fills the position from Jan. through June?
3. If the HR committee, chaired by John Uden, had no intention of filling the deputy city clerk position in 2013, why did it then finalize a job description for vacancy posting on Jan. 4?
4. If the mayor was aware that the HR committee was scheduled to finalize a new position description for vacancy posting on Jan. 4, then why did he inform the city clerk two days earlier that the position wouldn't be filled?
5. If the city clerk was performing her fiduciary duty by informing the city council of this hot mess, why did the chair of the HR committee feel compelled to "shut her down", as you so delicately put it?
If you can make sense of any of this, I'm ready to listen.