Eva Young wrote:
>
>I know the city has some sort of tracking system about calls to a Council
>Members office. It would be useful to have the numbers: calls received by
>a CM office, and number of calls returned. If the results were published,
>then it would be clear whether some offices were getting many more calls
>than other offices.
>
>WM:
>
>This was done years ago. At that time SSB was the council member. Then, calls for the
>Fifth, Sixth, and Eighth wards were astronomically higher than those for the other
>wards. (While I have a good head for numbers, ten-twelve years later I can't remember
>them.)At that time the council did nothing to assign additional staff to those wards,
>not even so much as to assign one person to be shared among them. The volume of
>calls, and now e-mails, has increased, maybe even exponentially.
>
The current call tracking system does assist those same limited staff
persons in keeping track of instituting remedies for specific
complaints, which helps. It does not solve the problem which is still
one of adequate staff for those three wards (and probably the 9th as well).
Were I going to complain about the state of city hall, one complaint
would be the failure to assign enough staff to distressed wards. The
mood of the council at the time of the data collection mentioned above
was that if one council got more staff, then everyone got more staff and
where would they house them. I considered the reply the old fashioned,
weenie-wagging, dynasty reply to a problem rather than a solution.
Historically, bureaucracies have been the last to update technology, the
last to adapt to current research (or even not-so-current research).
They didn't turn in their quill pens until private industry had moved
from steel nibs to fountain pens. They were the last to adopt
typewriters, the last to go electric typewriters, then selectrics, on to
computers. They were the last to give up secretaries with shorthand
skills to sit and listen to a letter being dictated rather than use a
dictaphone, and then a tape recorder). It's one of many ironies of
"leaders" who present themselves as new, forward-thinking, innovative,
whatever, that they beggar their staff to implement their innovations.
Part of that--fully 50% in my estimation--is our fault. We don't want
higher taxes, we want higher production without additional costs. Part
of that is a general belief that being a clerk is a low class occupation.
The current administration, in a dramatic budget-cutting move shortly
after being sworn in, removed it's receptionist and increased the wages
of newly-appointed staff who worked on the mayor's campaign. To me, that
said it all. Another white male who discounts the work of clerks even
though it's clerks who keep the wheels oiled and moving.
The city council is privileged to have some of the finest secretarial
clerks in the city. I haven't seen a wage scale, a personnel manual, or
anything tangible which shows me that the council appreciates those
clerks. Flowers on secretary's day do not mean squat.
Clerks are not good sound-bite fodder. Secretaries, unless they act out
publicly or can be made the fall guy for some stupidity, do not make
good copy. Bureaucracies are shameless exploiters.
Thank you for letting me vent. I've been honked off about this for
years--and, no, I was never a secretary in city hall.
WizardMarks, Central
>
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