Every time I hear someone on Town Council urging us to come to a consensus, I can’t help but 
think of the late British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s definition: “The process of abandoning all beliefs, principles, values and policies in search of something in which no one believes but to which no one objects.”
We are in the process of selecting a new town manager, a very important decision in the council-manager system of government Chapel Hill follows. In that set-up, the council hears from residents about what the town needs; council considers that input in making policies and decisions; the town manager leads the staff in putting those policies and decisions in action.
Trust is the bedrock of this way of doing things. Council and the community must trust the manager so we don’t feel the need to look over his or her shoulder.
To help us make the right decision, council is seeking input from town residents about the challenges the town will likely face in the next several years, and the experience and talents the new town manager must have to effectively deal with them.
Town residents will have many different priorities and ideas of what we, as a town, need. We council members will have our own list. By the time the information-gathering phase is over, we will have plenty of ideas and criteria; we won’t have a consensus.
At least, I hope we won’t.
Part of what makes Chapel Hill so enticing is our diversity of thought and the freedom to express views outside of convention. Every opposing view is an opportunity to think about a situation differently. If we make the time and effort to understand what others want and why, we get a glimpse of another vision of Chapel Hill. Maybe it’s one the rest of us hadn’t thought of; and maybe it has some features that would make our town even better.
But if we strive for consensus, we tamp down that creativity. We end up taking the well-worn path or following what’s trending. We resign ourselves to becoming Anytown, USA. We forfeit the ability to pick and choose and customize a town that works for us.
So please weigh in on what you think is important in a new town manager. Take an online survey http://www.empliant.com/survey/FA22A6728-E24B-AE79-29A4/ or come to one of three community meetings:
• Sunday, March 4 – 3 to 5 p.m. at Hargraves Community Center Gymnasium meeting room, 216 N. Roberson St.
• Monday, March 5 – 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. at Christ United Methodist Church Youth and Young Adults Building, 103 Market St. in Southern Village. (First floor meeting room; enter from the parking lot)
• Tuesday, March 6 – 1 to 3 p.m. at Chapel Hill Public Library Meeting Room B, 100 Library Drive
The meetings will be live-streamed on the @ChapelHillGov Facebook channel, and you comment there. You may also email your ideas to: townofchapelhill@developmentalassociates.com
Your ideas matter. As Thatcher would caution us: No great causes have been fought and won under the banner of “I stand for consensus.”
— Nancy Oates
plurimus
/ March 4, 2018One of my favorite historical characters. Attila the Hen would be proud.
I thought Chapel Hill was a “Mayor-Council” government? Mayor-Manager may be a more accurate description of recent history though.
Paraphrasing Socialist President Mitterrand you’ll need “the eyes of Caligula and the lips of Marilyn Monroe” to unify the council.
CitizenWill
/ March 5, 2018I went to the initial poorly attended meeting. I’m assuming it was equal parts of poor advertising, poor scheduling and poor outreach (something like this takes weeks and weeks of communicating to the many groups who have an interest in the outcome of this process).
Staff and our consultant were prepared to roll-out another “uni-directional” agenda – lots of narrowly focused material and “questions” designed to elicit comfortable answers.
Fortunately, recent mayoral candidate Eugene Farrar, Theresa – a young woman from the local community concerned about youth’s voice in this matter, one 14-year resident and myself derailed that plan to some extent and focused on the kinds of issues, questions and process concerns that we thought were primary going forward.
David
/ March 5, 2018The video of Sunday’s public input session can be viewed here: https://www.facebook.com/chapelhillgov/videos/10156367984922262/
It must have been distracting to have the videographer constantly circling the room.
I imagine that the consultant by now is getting a pretty good sense of the fault lines in Chapel Hill regarding the outgoing manager. The Chamber gave him an award for his years of service while numerous residents have communicated to the consultant their strong desire that the next manager be very different from the current one.
CitizenWill
/ March 5, 2018Thanks David, that saved me from pulling together notes.
Interestingly enough, the earlier discussion on process concerns was excised.
On the plus side, Catherine graciously didn’t capture my growing bald spot.
I look forward to seeing the Town’s notes and the consultant’s recommendations based on this and the other meetings.
Nancy
/ March 5, 2018You are correct that Chapel hill is a council-manager form of government. Sometimes we forget.
David
/ March 7, 2018Will,
You’re not going bald, you’re just growing taller than your hair. Take it from one who knows.
Cheers,
David
CitizenWill
/ March 7, 2018New video up https://www.facebook.com/chapelhillgov/videos
I expect a timely report for public review now that the Town has collected some input from survey and these public meetings.
I’m especially interested to see how faithfully the input Fred, Gregg, Julie, Eugene, Theresa, etc. was captured.
Given we have seen cases where staff has created a summary of survey results that was completely at odds with the underlying data and “free form” inputs citizens provided, I would also like to see raw input into survey to judge its fidelity as well.
CitizenWill
/ March 9, 2018Nancy, I believe it would bolster confidence in the candidate outreach process if some demographics of the respondents were published early.
Without violating candidates’ privacy, the Town could publish how many folks responded along with gender, rough ages (between 30-35,40-45, 45-50), etc. so the community has some indication of how diverse the field was before it is condensed down to the 2 or 3 candidates the public will eventually hear about.
Gregg Gerdau
/ March 10, 2018The job description is now posted on the headhunter’s site http://bit.ly/2Fs7E3U, the ICMA site http://bit.ly/2FwaNeY, and the NC League of Municipalities site http://bit.ly/2Gdv1LF . The Supplemental Questions tab on the headhunter’s site is interesting because applicants must answer them in addition to submitting a resume. Very limited focus on economic development or any other experience I spoke of as important.