Surprise is growing up
With every new organization or body of people, growing up can be hard to do. The recent disclosure by the City Manager about how the City Council has been doing business is an excellent example of how messy things can be when growing up. The fact that their seems to be a lot of back door, Smokey room politics and arm twisting is not surprising. When people have been making decisions over coffee with their neighbors on the backyard fence for years, its tough to change. But change it must. The current city council has become more like a bloated group of corporate managers who have been in their jobs way to long. As often will happen, some of the good folks are going to get hurt as well as the ones that should have left a long time ago. Where's the corner chair and time out when you need it.
But growth can also be positive. I am speaking about the job the Economic Development Group is doing in reaching out for ideas and then providing feedback in terms of their newsletter. They are one example of what looks like a group of city employees that are trying their best to be proactive and help the city of Surprise grow up. Two stars for this group.
Its been my experience in business, that often the leadership team can only take you so far. Its time for a new team in Surprise with modern and open methods of providing guidance and receiving guidance from their customers (the citizens of Surprise). It is often not very easy, since alot of us (that includes me) often speak without having all the facts or insight we should have. Well its just human nature and the new city council needs to make above board communications and openess a key to their terms. The current council empowered a city manager who has built a good team, but now its time to take that retirement package and go enjoy it. Somewhere along the way they lost the map. Till the next time.