Frank You Very Much

I was heartened to see the quotes from CC Murphy, CC Descoteaux, and CC Mendonca regarding the re-surfacing of the residency requirement issue for city employees. Here is a snippet from the Sun regarding CC Descoteaux's thoughts on the matter:

Councilor Franky Descoteaux said she supports the long-term of goal of more Lowellians working in the city, but also does not believe a residency requirement should be mandatory.

"Practically, however, as municipal employees' pay and benefits increase, and as taxpayers, and state and federal agencies place higher demands on government systems, I am more inclined to prioritize getting the best possible value in an employee -- including education, experience and aptitude -- rather than whether they come from Lowell or not," she said.

Descoteaux said she would be willing to look into policies that give new hires incentives to move to Lowell, including providing a one-time monetary benefit to those that do so.

As a sideline judge, I give the quote here a "10" because it hits on all the important points -- first, that an in-city residence mandate is a bad idea (chiefly because it would limit the available pool of people to draw from, and all the outside experiences/opinions they would bring to bear); second, because it hits on the idea that we're going to increasingly rely on government services in the years ahead, and that we should expect much from its well-compensated employees (Luke 12:48); and thirdly, that a commonsense middle-ground solution could allow the city to draw from a worldwide labor pool but then incentivize city residence and then benefit from the way that would enhance the tax base and generate more social capital across the municipal gov't/private citizen sphere.

Global War Vets' Day in the Sun

Jen Myers did a great write-up in the Sun yesterday about the Greater Lowell Global War Veterans -- a big tent/wide umbrella veterans' organization open to all who served in any theater (including CONUS) in the post-Vietnam era.

Cliff Krieger eloquently answered the "Why this group?" [in addition to the dozens of other veterans' groups in the Greater Merrimack Valley] question on his site.

As he writes, every group has its own vernacular and its own common places. Global War Vets has its place, and the group has tons of growth opportunity.

Ethnicity and 'The Fighter'

So right after 'The Fighter' ended last night, my wife and my brother-in-law were saying how some of the spoken Khmer language in the movie sounded inauthentic. This all went right past me, of course, because I don't know enough Khmer to appreciate how "Don't try to rip us off like that" and "Do you think we're all stupid or something?" should actually be said to someone promoting a pyramid scheme.

I didn't really *get* it because I assumed most of the Khmer speakers in the movie were found right here in Lowell, so I couldn't figure out why their way of expressing those things didn't sound right to a native Khmer speaker born in the States in 1985 or to another born in Cambodia in the mid-1970s.

Either way, I give some credit to the filmmakers for not whitewashing the city in the early 1990s. I didn't live here then, but I'm well aware there were already tens of thousands of Cambodian-Americans living in Lowell at the time. Even by just including the scenes where Dicky (or is it Dickie? I see a 50/50 split in the print media) walks by a friendly group of Cambodian-Americans, this film avoids the revisionism of productions like the blockbuster "Pearl Harbor" which rewrote Hawaii's ethnic makeup in order to make the Japanese seem more like *them* and the Hawaiians more like *us.*

Regardless, movie stereotypes cut many ways. For instance, how many people in Lexington were represented by the guy with the sweater thrown over his shoulder who butts into Micky and Charlene's conversation outside the art house cinema? Not many.

I'm always reminded of this when I think about how a friend of mine and his then-girlfriend reacted to the forgettable and formulaic 1990s film Maid in Manhattan. After the film ended, she started off right away about the tiresome way that Hollywood paints Latinas as "sultry" and "fiery," and how the storyline relied on a wealthy white man who saves the day.

Rather than become defensive or apologetic, he just said, "Well, I get tired of the way movies like that caricature white people as a bunch of soulless bumblers who are emotionally tone-deaf and uncaring towards others."

Fair enough. I remember a college class in which a student complained (in the same 90-minute period, mind you!) about the way African-Americans are negatively portrayed in popular media and culture, and then went on to say how she hated The Cosby Show because it showed a stable, wealthy, two-parent black household with a doctor/lawyer couple and well-adjusted kids. "We're not all like that! I don't want white people to see that and then draw a conclusion that all is just perfect in our community these days!"

I can empathize with both of her points, which are not necessarily self-contradictory. But I think everyone who enjoys TV and movies needs to first acknowledge that visual art forms with highly restrictive time constraints are never going to depict all the subleties of life, or of people, in an accurate way.

Let's agree on that first, but also be unafraid to call out offensive or tiresome stereotypes in movies, or the offensive way in which certain ethnicities can be multi-dimensional but others introduced for tokenism or just to teach the other, *real* characters important life lessons that will then make them more whole.

Goodbye, Pat

I learned this afternoon via the local blogosophere that Pat McCarthy had passed away.

Pat was the first person I met when I came to Lowell in March 2008, looking to buy a condo downtown. On a cold but tolerable day, I popped into the office on Central Street, just before that little turn where it becomes Prescott Street (right next to 1 City Square, and across from the Post Office) to see a guy with slicked-back white hair reading a newspaper and chomping on a cigar. I explained why I was there, and he dropped whatever he had been doing to give me an animated, guided walking tour of Lowell...for the next two days.

He took me all around the downtown, explaining not just what everything was but what it had been, two, three, or more iterations ago. All points were emphasized by pointing the cigar towards the ground and an "I'm tellin' you, kid." He told me all about the old days of the trucks carting in booze, the epic brawls with hammers, and, of course, the "massage pahlahs." I think by the time we were done I had Jack Kerouac's daily routine damn near committed to memory.

We checked out many of the buildings downtown while he caught me up on Democratic party politics (he had been a big Hillary for President guy) and I told him that all the news from Iraq wasn't bad (I had just gotten back a couple months beforehand).

I wound up closing on the spacious place on Market Street with the breathtaking view of downtown and the mountains way out beyond, which I stretched myself to get into but am now just a year or two away from going from red to black on the equity thing.

From then until recently, I would run into Pat McCarthy every now and then, either at TEFKA* Sangria's, Brew'd Awakening, Towers News, or anywhere in between. Because we didn't see each other often, there would always be new milestones to report when we did, and a ten-minute errand could become an hours-long event. One thing that really stands out is that Pat always went way out of his way to introduce me to all the people he knew. He would grab me a seat right in the middle of groups of friends who'd know each other, literally, for decades. Effortlessly, he made it seem as if we did, too.

The topics were always wide-ranging, the stories were always colorful -- even if sometimes apocryphal -- but it was always lively and worth the time to talk with...er, listen to, Pat.

*The Establishment Formerly Known As

How Bureaucracy Happens

"Nothing is ever a big deal...until it happens to you, at which point it becomes a very big deal."

So in the National Guard, there's a fairly steady undercurrent of tension between the part-timers and the full-timers. The attitude of the part-timers tends to be something along the lines of, "Those lazy bastards. They've got all month to plan just two days of drill, but somehow things always get messed up." Many full-timers tend to think, "Those ungrateful bastards. I work so hard to make sure all the paperwork is in order, and I'm lucky to even get as much as an acknowledgement for it."

I have a fairly interesting window on it all, because I sort of sit between the two worlds. The units can bring more FTSP (Full-Time Support Personnel) on board during special projects or near units' mobilization dates, who essentially augment the *real* full-time force by working during the weeks and the drill weekends but in a temporary status.

As with any longstanding dispute or misunderstanding, the truth falls somewhere in the middle. However, if I HAD to pick a side, I'm going with the part-timers. They're the ones who SHOULD have everything in order for them on the weekends. They're the ones who make the sacrifice of juggling two jobs, and they're the ones who lose financially when things get screwed up.

To use a not-so-hypothetical example, let's say someone who worked a civilian, private sector job planned to take the month of January off because he had been promised a course that ran the entire month (and would pay him his regular base pay, plus travel and allowance costs). Then, when the time came to input the order, the full-time Officer in charge arbitrarily decided, "No, I don't see the need for this...it can just be completed online instead on the soldier's own time." Never mind all the e-mails and phone calls during the months prior (during which time the desk jockey Officer could've voiced those thoughts). More importantly, never mind the well-being of that soldier. His civilian employer had already arranged for him to be gone in January, and the soldier had already made travel and lodging arrangements for the course. The person making that decision is going to be paid handsomely every 1st and 15th of the month regardless, and has apparently forgotten that it's not that simple for everyone else.

On a smaller scale, other things like this happen from time to time. Training events get planned or cancelled without all the people involved being notified. Bureaucratic snafus keep people from getting the proper (new) pay after a promotion. Security clearance packages get lost in the sauce. And so on and so on.

In almost all cases, it boils down to one simple thing: People not treating an individual situation as if it were *their own.*

In other words, let's say you send a mortgage check to Wells Fargo every month on the first. Let's say you usually notice it clear your account sometime around the seventh. If it gets to be the 11th or 12th of the month, and you don't see the updated bank activity, what are you going to do?

Don't worry, I'll answer for you.

You'll call to see what happened. You'll want to figure out if it was a Post Office issue, or if the bank had been backlogged, or if there was some type of problem with the check, etc. You might offer to have your check voided and write a new one, or to see what the manager can do for you, or some other proactive solution...What you WON'T do, however, is just sort of *let it go.* You don't want to get hit with penalties or other bank issues for something that wasn't even your fault in the first place.

Really good bureaucrats treat their jobs the same way. They follow up. If they don't hear back from an important e-mail, they call. If that doesn't bear fruit, they call around the office they need to find someone else. They double check. They keep lists. Basically, they take ownership of their role, and treat everyone's issue like it were theirs.

Unfortunately, not-so-good bureaucrats "fire and forget." Yes, they may show basic competency by sending someone's paperwork off to the equivalent of the "Top Men" warehouse at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark, but they don't take that next, critical step of making sure it actually got there. Not-so-good bureaucrats are very good at using the defensive mechanism of insisting that "it's not a big deal" to address other people's concerns.

The problem is, it is a big deal. If your application package for a Company Commander position, or your paperwork packet for a security clearance, or your eligibility data for a VA home loan were on someone else's desk, it would be a really big deal to you. If you lived paycheck-to-paycheck, and took a month off of your civilian job because you had been verbal and written promises to come on orders for equivalent or higher pay, but then had that rug pulled out from under you, it would be a really big deal then, too.

When people completely lose sight of that, they deserve a wake-up call that, unfortunately, usually never comes. This is sort of a tautology, but the people who least need the wake-up call in the first place (i.e. the most 'tuned-in' bureaucrats) are also the quickest to see the light when something gets screwed up and then try to fix it. And, of course, vice versa.

Bear in mind, this isn't just more public sector self-loathing stuff here. I think this sort of thing applies to ALL large organizations, and can be felt by anyone who has ever tried to resolve a bogus insurance claim, or moving violation, or clerical error on a bank statement, etc. It's YOUR big deal, and not theirs, and that's obvious from the manner and attitude with which it's being handled.

That's *sort of* okay and expected when we're talking about impersonal and anonymous settings, esp. when you consider the person handling it may have hundreds or even thousands of cases and could NEVER be expected to treat each like they were his or hers. However, when the scale is far smaller and the relationship between supporter and supported is more explicit, the type of callousness that leads someone to say, "Just do it online," without a shred of regard for how that might affect the person in question or his family is, well, unacceptable.

Newark, You Have a Problem

A buddy of mine just forwarded me this New York Times article about a 13% cut to the Newark Police Department recently announced by Mayor Cory Booker's Administration.

If you don't follow the link, I don't blame you. I don't have such a hot track record of following links I see in blogs or in forwarded e-mails, so I'll steer clear of hypocrisy land and just give you the Readers' Digest edition:

The city of Newark has an $83 million budget shortfall. Its mayor -- who happens to be one of the most phenomenal people in public service today on any level -- needs to address that. He met with the Fraternal Order of Police, tried to get some negotiations but, in NATO terminology, wound up with NO JOY. So his only option, even amidst rising crime rates after years of positive trends in the city, was to make layoffs.

Camden had it much worse, by the way. That far more bedraggled hamlet across from Philadelphia just cut half of its police force. Bear in mind, Camden consistently ranks as "America's Worst City" in statistical formulas that measure quality of life.

The worst part of all?

This is just the beginning. Because the union was unwilling to compromise with the city, all those jobless policemen and their families wind up in the loss column, as does the Mayor, and, way more importantly, all the law-abiding citizens of Newark. The Union can claim some sort of Pyrrhic victory, and you could *sort of* say the other 87% of police benefited, but the new conditions of the city might not even make that true.

All this reminds me why President Obama deserves across-the-board applause for the two-year freeze on federal wages.

And who should be the first people celebrating that decision? Federal employees, that's who.

No typo there, and I'll wrap this up with my point, which I used before in reference to Vallejo, CA and also to recent events here in Lowell. When public sector salaries and benefits are allowed to spin out of control due to cozy negotiations or ridiculous, runaway annual *bumps* in a non-inflationary environment, the eventual effect is that the house of cards will come tumbling down and public sector workers will be out of a job. With the public services they perform taken away, there are lots of losers in the equation. This is what SC Jim Leary was getting at last week -- if the teachers' union tells the city to pound sand rather than compromise, the current school budget will be the victim. The assistant librarians and the media specialists and the coaches and the paraprofessionals would directly suffer, as would the students, and just about anyone with any education could tell you how that would adversely affect the rest of the city.

I'm not a gambler, but I know this: If someone said I could either keep my current wage -- albeit frozen for five years -- or choose an alternative where my agency would face 40% cuts over that time, possibly in an arbitrary manner, I would be plum crazy not to take that first option. I would even take a 10% cut rather than option two.

But looking at some of the visceral outrage to the President's decree, I'm guessing that not every servant of Uncle Sam sees it quite the same.

Koh Pich Memorial on Saturday

This just in, copied and pasted verbatim:

Dear Friends,

We want to share with you tragic news from the Kingdom of Cambodia. On November 22, 2010 there were 450 people confirmed dead (stampeded) on the final day of Cambodia’s annual Water Festival in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

We are hosting a memorial service and accepting donations for the victims and their families for this tragic loss of life. We invite you to come together in a memorial service this Saturday to mourn the loss of their lives and to share the grief of the victims’ families.

WHEN: DECEMBER 04, 2010
TIME: 9:00 AM to 12:00 NOON
WHERE: Sompao Meas Restaurant
450 Chelmsford Street, MA 01851

Monetary Donation can be made payable to:
Koh Pich Victim Relief Fund c/o Sam Meas
P.O. Box 1323
Haverhill, MA 01831