Pick battles big enough to mater, small enough to win.

Jonathon Kozel

Maywood, CA has problems.

No, I mean they really have problems…

Maywood, a small working-class community south of downtown Los Angeles, plans to lay off all its employees, disband its Police Department and turn over its entire municipal operations to a neighbor — an action that appears to be without precedent among California cities.

Maywood’s $10.1-million general fund budget has a deficit of at least $450,000, officials said. Beyond that, the city has been unable to obtain insurance because of a history of lawsuits, many involving its Police Department, which also patrols Cudahy. Operating without insurance would make even routine government services highly risky.

Under the city’s plan, the Sheriff’s Department will take over patrols. The neighboring city of Bell will take over other municipal services, including staffing Maywood’s City Hall, saving the city an estimated $164,375 a year, officials said. The changes would take effect July 1.

Contracting with Bell is the most cost-effective way to ensure that residents still get basic public services, Councilman Felipe Aguirre said. “Our streets will be cleaned, our potholes will be filled, this is not affecting any of that,” he said.

“We’re limited on our choices and limited on what we can do,” Councilman Felipe Aguirre said. “We don’t want to file for bankruptcy. We don’t want to disappear as a city.”

I hate to be the one to tell you Mr. Aguirre, but you just did disappear as a city.

There are many problems for which I have no solution.

Patrick O’Donnell with Cleveland.Com writes about one of them…

Sarah Zatik retired two years ago, at the age of 53, but she never stopped working.

The Parma schools superintendent immediately was rehired into the same job. It was all pre-arranged, just a matter of paperwork.

The bookkeeping move brought Zatik a big financial benefit, despite a $15,000 cut in salary after being rehired. By retiring, she could start collecting well over $100,000 a year in retirement payments from the state in addition to her $158,000 superintendent’s pay. Thanks to a state retirement system that allows retirement at a young age, Zatik can collect both a paycheck and her retirement payments for 12 years before she hits the standard retirement age of 65.

She is a member in an exclusive club of double-dipping superintendents, who retire and return to their same jobs or rotate to other school districts.

An analysis by Ohio’s eight largest newspapers found:

One in four public school leaders in Ohio’s 614 districts bring home the bacon twice.

Part of the problem of not having a solution to this situation is I have no idea how this practice evolved into what it is now.

But this practice has never passed my smell test and never will.

Adam Pagnucco is retiring from writing a blog. He wrote a local political blog in Maryland.

I had never read Adam until he made this announcement. I like his parting assessment of local politicians.

Elected officials are not the cardboard, All-American baby-kissing characters they try to become at election time. Nor are they all evil, money-grubbing con artists as they are frequently portrayed by the media. Yes, many of them are insecure, needy, egotistical and overly sensitive, though there are plenty of exceptions. A few of them are even paranoid, arrogant and self-obsessed. But the vast majority of them enter politics with some spark of good intent in their hearts. Many of them really do have beliefs, and even principles, and are not faking them. Most of them want to perform well.

What the public never sees are the sacrifices they make. I can’t count the number of times elected officials have despaired in private conversations with me – often very emotionally – about the impact of their office-holding on their families, their careers, their finances, their social relationships outside of politics, their enjoyment of the fun things in life, and even on their emotional condition. Some sacrifice these things for the wrong reasons. Maybe it’s ego or the need to be recognized. These people become little more than the badges they wear on their chests. But some sacrifice these things for the right reasons, like a true dedication to helping others. The really good ones often can’t serve without giving 100%. I sympathize. I wish there was a reliable way for the voters to tell apart the good ones from the mediocre ones and the really bad ones.

Amen.

Local governments are famous for spending money on a “plan” then ignoring it. There are literally millions of plans sitting on shelves across the nation collecting dust. One such plan is in Billings, MT.

It’s no easy task to identify the worst part of the Billings City Council’s vote against disc golf in Pioneer Park last week, but let me try.

The worst part wasn’t the council’s arrogant, condescending attitude toward disc golfers, who were characterized by opponents — a characterization not challenged by anyone on the council — as rude, belligerent, drug-abusing gang bangers.

It wasn’t the council’s craven surrender to that small group of opponents, who trooped to the microphone to gripe about the damage being done to “their” park.

It wasn’t even the council’s breezy refusal to consider the results of a professionally conducted, statistically accurate survey of city residents, which showed broad support for disc golf in Pioneer Park.

No, it was this: The City Council spent $86,000 of our money on a huge, detailed master plan for Pioneer Park. That plan laid out a thorough, virtually no-cost series of recommendations that would have dealt with every substantive problem associated with disc golf in the park.

And what did the council do? It utterly ignored those recommendations and simply voted to remove disc golf from the master plan, effectively banning that sport from the park. The council might as well have voted to burn $86,000 on Community Seven television.

What plan is sitting on your shelf being ignored?

Every now and then you can read about some community who is discussing the leashing of cats. Treat cats as dogs are treated. Now days that community is Barre, VT.

As a newly elected Mayor in 1984 I had to preside over that issue coming before our City Council and I ended up casting the tie breaking vote to leash cats.

The uproar was reported from coast to coast. The cards and letters flowed into the office.

This story can be found in Moving Mountains and Molehills Local Politics 101 where I dissect the events that led to this issue, what happened and why.

Order yours today!

I really like “young politician” stories. The younger the better.

That’s why I like Dodge Landesman.

Dodge has his head screwed on straight.

At 19 he sees the need for even more youthful involvement in politics…

As an example of the importance of young adults involving themselves in politics, Landesman brought up local bars and the noise they cause, an issue often discussed by community boards. He said that while older residents clearly have an opinion on the matter, and while noise pollution is a concern, it’s also important to hear from younger people, who are often the ones making the noise.

Now is that common sense or what?

We need more Dodge Landesmans in politics.

Naperville, Illinois is considering term limits for their city officials.

“One of the big pros [of term limits] is getting fresh blood in,” … “One of the big cons is losing institutional knowledge.”

I’ve always been opposed to term limits. I believe term limits are already in place and they are called elections.

When only 1/3 of local elections are opposed why would we want to prohibit good incumbents from serving again?

Local activists who push for this type of legislation would be better off if they spent their time recruiting new candidates to run against the bad incumbents and let the good incumbents remain.

I can’t ever remember a story like Alvin Greene’s story. Mr. Greene is the U.S. Senate candidate from South Carolina after he …

inexplicably defeated a heavily favored former legislator and judge to become the state’s Democratic nominee for the Senate.

The Associated Press reported that Mr. Greene was arrested in November and is facing a felony obscenity charge; he is accused of showing pornography to a University of South Carolina student. He had been discharged “involuntarily” from the Army and showed no signs of having waged an actual campaign in recent months — no advertising, no staff, no money.

Who are the Democrats blaming for this situation?

House Majority Whip James Clyburn, D-S.C., has suggested Greene is a Republican plant and has called on federal authorities to investigate where the money came from.

We haven’t heard the last of this story. At least I hope we haven’t.

Yesterday I attended a 12 and under girls softball tournament. A granddaughter was playing in it. The problem is the granddaughter is 13. The coach lied about her age in order for her to play. I don’t know how many other girls on the team were illegal.

My granddaughters team won the championship. They celebrated. They took the team pictures. They acted like they won the tournament fair and square and deserved the medals around their necks.

I found the entire day to be absolutely disgusting.