Martino: “Fixes”…no thank you!

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On March 13th the Palm Beach Gardens registered voters are being asked by its City Council to answer yes or no to 4 ballot questions that significantly change the City Charter and dramatically alter the recently passed City Council Term Limit Law. From my perspective, these changes do not upgrade, enhance, or provide forward momentum for the residents and their City Charter or government. In my opinion, the 4 ballot questions deserve a “NO”.  

The City Council and others that support these changes offer nothing of consequence or necessity in the way of rational reasoning. Their basis of reasoning for these substantive Charter changes is…  

• Recommendations of Charter Review Committee 

Rebuttal: This committee was appointed by the City Council. Two of the members were City lobbyists and one of them does not live in the City. The committee was not balanced geographically and no appointment was made from any of the older original Plats of the City. In a hasty fashion, it held only four meetings causing the hired consultant  to remark about the brevity of the process. Finally, recommendations are only that and need not be accepted, adopted, or approved, as has happened in the past.    

• Learning curve for new Council members is steep 

Rebuttal: My answer is simple; the intricacies of the office one seeks should be learned before standing for that office. If you cannot be productive from the first meeting don’t run for the job. In various campaign forums and meetings, these City Council members asserted their experience and fitness for the job. In their campaign literature that is mailed to voters the council members ballyhoo loud and clear about their readiness to perform.  I guess we should not have believed their exclamations.  

• 6 years is not enough time to do the job 

Rebuttal: Above the assertion is the learning curve to do the job is steep. If two terms of three years, or 6 years, is not enough to do the job. Well, are 9 or 12, or 15 or 28 years enough? How much time is enough to be competent in a part-time job that has it work product implemented by a well-paid, well tenured, Administration and Staff.   

• Institutional memory 

Rebuttal: The meshing of the two words, institutional memory, sounds important. Is it politically correct to have it? It’s almost scary to think you may not have it. So I looked it up.  Institutional memory is a collective set of facts, concepts, experiences and knowledge held by a group of people. Institutional memory has been defined as stored knowledge within an organization. There are different ideas about how institutional memory is transferred, whether it is between people or through written sources. It is my opinion, in the case of a Council-Manager form of local government whose elected officials are part-time and elected on a staggered basis, as Palm Beach Gardens does, the main source of memory comes from input by people to be recognized in and through formal hearings, meetings, and then by documentation into public records, and not by any particular individual, elected or otherwise. Institutional memory than, as it applies to a Council-Manager government, is not vested in any one City Council member, but its City Council as a group, augmented by transparent public documented records, and an Administration with Staff that has some degree of tenure and longevity.  

• The City Charter is bush league and broken 

Rebuttal: That’s right; according to our City Attorney’s comment at the October 5, 2017 City Council meeting we have a “Bush League” City Charter. The charter is the constitution for our City. By extrapolation then, is the City Attorney with his “Bush League” utterance inferring that Palm Beach Gardens is a second tier, minor league, City? Probably not is my hope, but his other comments also smacked of insolence for the City Charter. Our City Charter has evolved, been amended, and guided our City over time since 1959, long before our current City Attorney was around to completely understand its history to present day. It has stood the test of time. It has been tested in the Courts and upheld in almost every instance. Our City Charter is not broken. It does not need the 4 “fixes” the City Council is trying to foist on the residents.  

This City Council was elected under the language and laws of the current City Charter which includes the Term Limits, election laws, legal vote counting, and other regulations which they now claim, after the fact, need “fixing”, and  right now. Where was the urgency during their campaigning? Why didn’t they offer these “fixes” as platform issues during their campaigns? The Term Limits that they want to change allowed them to be elected. The above reasoning for the Charter “fixes” they say are necessary are feeble at best and almost approach the absurd. In my opinion, this City Council, that has not yet completed one 3-year term in office, has been a bit self-serving and less than an “honest broker” in this “fixing” process. 

The information I have learned says each of the 4 referendum questions should be answered with a “NO”.