Editor,
One of the primary functions and responsibilities of City Hall, no matter what city or state, is to service its customers. City Hall is in the business of solving, fixing, directing and mitigating customers’ city related/caused issues, as long as they fall within the scope of what the city has control over, directly or indirectly.
City Hall’s customers are primarily its residents (tax paying or rent paying) and business owners/operators (and their employees) who do business in the city, and lastly visitors/tourists.
City Hall needs to be customer-focused, not City Hall employee-focused. All of this talk of data collection, more studies, comparatives, saving water, saving electricity and happy millennials doesn’t mean squat if you have customers who cannot access you on a normally as needed basis, which to most of this country’s citizenry equates to five days a week, 40 hours a week, weekends excluded.
Heck, some company’s actually believe in 24-hour customer service, like phone, utility, internet and software providers. How would you folks like it if they started cutting back those customer service hours (getting your problems solved/fixed) in the name of saving water and happier employees, etc.? The customer is the one “paying the price here,” and “picking up the tab” (primarily through different taxes, fees, permits and assessments), and the customers should be the ones “driving the bus.”
Instead, what Laguna’s City Hall has continued to do is find ways to put “paying customers” at the end of the service line. Baffling that so many City Hall employees consider it such an inconvenience and drudgery that they are demanding we conform our habits and practices to their desires of 9/80 work schedules, yet they are knocking down an average annual median pay for full time employees of over $97,000, and bumped to $127,854 with benefits (2015 pay levels).
Have all of us forgotten what the purpose of City Hall is, or has it now become a place that is totally driven by employee wants, needs and desires, and the paying customers simply must find a way to conform our needs and wants to work around theirs? Who the hell is the employer/customer here, us or them?
I’ll be retreating to my safe space now, to play with my puppies, and all of you can tell me to go back to the dark ages, as “we’re not in Kansas any more, Toto.”
Jim Mouradick, Laguna Beach
This commebt is accurate, infuriating and alas will likely be ignored for lack of will to change
Hired city staff deemed “essential employees” earning $230,000+ do not need a city housing subsidy paid by taxpayers to live in Laguna Beach.
Well said! Laguna Beach residents should be concerned and outraged by the self serving culture that has been flourishing under our current City Manager and our been there too long to be effective City Council members. WAKE UP LB residents//taxpayers and start saying NO! Why are our needs behind City employees, endless consultants and tourist? City employees are public servants – not trust fund babies. It”s time we stop supporting self-serving City Management and Council members run our city like THEY are trust funders at our expense. We can start by saying no now and making a change in our representatives in 2018. Interested in city government facts? If so, visit: lagunabeachchat.com.