Golis: Is Humpty Dumpty on the mend?

Checking out the Santa Rosa City Council meeting last week, I thought I’d wandered on to the wrong website. There were no grim faces, no shouting matches. There wasn’t a censure vote aimed at another council member. There were only folks trying to work through problems.

Who are these people?

Yes, it’s early in the new term. Given the tough issues facing the council, no one should expect broad smiles and victory parties any time soon. On issues ranging from new development to spending priorities to rent control, these council members don’t always view the world in the same way.

Still, Santa Rosans want to be hopeful, and this new council appears to be working to find common ground. Few would have said as much about its predecessor. Three newly elected council members - Mayor John Sawyer, Vice Mayor Chris Coursey and former Police Chief Tom Schwedhelm - know that Santa Rosans expect more from them. (It’s instructive that two new council members became mayor and vice mayor.)

No doubt a new city manager, Sean McGlynn, let them know, too, that he has enough to do without managing two more years of conflict and dysfunction among the seven council members.

In his short time here, McGlynn has been described as a roll-up-your-sleeves kind of manager, someone eager to re-connect city government and the people it serves. “I think we’ve closed ourselves off in a lot of ways,” he told City Hall reporter Kevin McCallum in January. “We’re in the process of re-opening our doors.”

Engineer and urban planner Dick Carlile, who has served on both the Design Review Board and the Planning Commission, is a longtime observer of Santa Rosa city government. On Tuesday night, he offered this appraisal of the new council and the new city manager: “I’m really encouraged by the fact that you’ve got (goals) into a work plan. I’m encouraged because of the dynamics of the new council. I like the mix you have here - and the focus.”

On this night, the council once again was working to repair the damage to the city’s credibility. The creation of a new senior position, community engagement director, responds to a recommendation from the Open Government Task Force. The citizens’ group was convened after a series of embarrassments, culminating with the city’s inability to respond in the days following the shooting of 13-year-old Andy Lopez.

Even as he admitted that the new position is “a bit of an experiment,” Mayor Sawyer said it speaks to the council’s determination to change the culture at City Hall.

Vice Mayor Coursey asked that the job description attract applicants who will “make sure that community engagement, openness and transparency are part of the values and goals of every department and of every employee - part of the DNA of the whole organization.”

Councilman Gary Wysocky cast the lone dissenting vote, saying, in part, that the existence of a job dedicated to openness doesn’t guarantee that city officials under duress will make the right decisions.

So far as it goes, this is true. Whether the community engagement director can change the culture will depend on his or her determination to challenge the status quo. Too often public officials lose their way when they can identify reasons not to share information.

Regardless, a city government with a reputation for secrecy couldn’t very well reject the recommendation of a task force created to correct the problem - a task force that spent nine months developing these recommendations.

About the last thing this council needed was a headline that reads: “Council rejects plan to curb City Hall secrecy.”

Keeping with the task force’s recommendations, a smart, new website designed to make government data more accessible - data.srcity.org - is up and running. A new and more convenient time for public comments during council meetings has been established, and a new sunshine law is said to be on the way.

During the same meeting, the council reviewed what will become a framework for confronting the city’s most pressing needs.

If you want to be reminded why this is tough job, you should listen to the heart felt pleas from advocates for the homeless. There are no easy solutions to the problems of homelessness, but people expect the council to do something.

After 4½ months, this new council has set a course for itself, pledging a new openness in city government and committing to a work plan for resolving issues that have lingered for too long.

Open government, affordable housing, rent control, homelessness, transit-oriented development, reunification of Old Courthouse Square, Roseland annexation - it’s an ambitious agenda. (Some may say too ambitious.)

What we know for sure is that council members won’t lack for issues likely to test their newfound collegiality.

For now, a new city manager and a new City Council seem to understand that the old rancor was never going to work.

Can council members continue to manage their differences and work together, keeping their promise to voters? Do Santa Rosans have reasons to be more hopeful? Stay tuned.

Pete Golis is a columnist for The Press Democrat. Email him at golispd@gmail.com.