The era of city hall top honchos assuming the role of “Santa” spending money like a drunken sailor and also being cutting edge with politically correct labels is now in the rear view mirror.

The latest cleanup was earlier this month when the Manteca City Council restored the name “Human Resources and Risk Management” moniker to the department that handles hiring and other employee issues.

Former City Manager Miranda Lutzow got the council in March 2020 to rechristen it the “Employee Services and Engagement Department.”
Lutzow’s argument was that it better reflected the department’s mission and would somehow improve employee morale. It also sounded nice, trendy, and cutting edge in municipal governance circles across the country.

There was only one problem. It didn’t better “reflect” what the department does.

In a memo presented to the council for their Dec. 7 meeting, Human Resources Manager Dawn Cortes noted the cutting edge name change led “to some confusion amongst staff as well as the general public.”

The name change also made it difficult for the city to recruit qualified individuals for a vacancy within the department. The result was an unsuccessful hunt and the need to re-launch a search for qualified applicants from scratch while making it clear the job deals with human resources issues rather than “employee services.”

No repeat of Manteca’s

‘Great Christmas Giveaway’

on taxpayers’ dime

This month also marked the second anniversary of the “Great Christmas Giveaway”.

Former City Manager Miranda Lutzow and her handpicked sidekick former Assistant City Manager Lisa Blackmon convinced the city council at the time they could shut down virtually all city functions for three days by giving all 350 employees non-paid days off Christmas week. They already had Thursday and Friday of that week off in 2019 due to Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.

Even after repeated questioning Lutzow and Blackmon said it wouldn’t cost the city a dime.

They were right. It didn’t cost the city a dime. It was closer to $240,000.

That’s because in police and firefighters had to work. They instead were granted three “floating days” off over the course of seven months.

But to have those floating days off they needed people to cover their shifts and maintain minimum service levels. The plan was to allow public safety staff to take their Christmas bonus days off during the ensuing months when other staff could cover them. While that was the same way the city handled solid waste collectors as well, public safety staffing was much more problematic.

As a result police and firefighting overtime skyrocketed.

The lame response given when this was pointed out after the fact was that it didn’t really impact the general fund as police and firefighter OT was already budgeted. The problem is the money was budgeted for real needs stemming from emergencies and staffing shortages triggered by illness, court dates on an officer’s day off, and workmen’s compensation related absences as opposed to the city manager channeling Santa Claus.

As for the other employees they dipped into personal leave days or banked vacation days to get paid for the three days.

More than a half dozen city workers told the Bulletin in 2019 they were told by management that the three days off was being done as a way of boosting staff morale in light of the firing, departure, and placement of numerous department heads on paid administrative leave. The staff memo to the council noted the reason for the three days off was because of how Christmas fell and the fact they expected a lot of requests from staff for time off during the week.

The top brass at the time also told the council during the public meeting where the plan got approved “that no work gets done during the week (before Christmas) anyway.”

It was an issue Charlie Halford successfully latched onto to gain election to the City Council in November 2020.

For the record, the only paid holidays this year are Dec. 24 and Jan. 1 as Christmas and New Year’s fell on Saturdays.

Flora says he’s not

in the running for

Congressional seat

After it was pointed out last week on the Bulletin’s Think page that Assemblyman Heath Flora could be among those in a position to be effective candidates for the reconfigured 9th District Congressional seat, the Ripon Republican reached out to let it be known that he is not entertaining such a run in 2022.

Flora was elected in 2016 and under term limit rules can serve in the California legislature through 2028 providing he is re-elected.

The new lines for the 9th Assembly District includes Ripon, Manteca, Lathrop, Salida, Riverbank, Oakdale, Escalon, Waterford, Lodi, Galt, southeast Sacramento County,  eastern San Joaquin and Stanislaus counties and slivers of western Calaveras and Tuolumne counties.

To contact Dennis Wyatt, email dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com