Happy One Year Anniversary to Antioch City Manager Bessie Scott.
Sometimes you must admit you are wrong, and I was a year ago. I hated how the hiring process went down of Ms Scott. It seemed rigged and rammed down everyone’s throat where I thought the next city council should have made the hiring decision, not an outgoing one. A year later, and upon learning what actually transpired, my tune changed. I felt better upon getting to know Ms. Scott this past year and learning what she is all about. She is fantastic and can’t say enough good things about her.
Fast forward to today, despite the grenades Ms. Scott has taken by many in the community, the city council, and others, she has proven to be the right person to help move the City of Antioch in the right direction as foundations are being built. I understand people want fixes quickly and speed does matter, but getting it correct is absolutely critical.
Anyone in leadership knows fixing a sinking ship is nearly impossible and will take time—especially true when someone is set up by a city council for failure and not given the tools to do a job properly combined with a budget fiasco, its a recipe for disaster. One could argue the current council is stuck on 20-year-old thinking which only ensures the same mistakes will keep happening over and over and over… you get the point. Either way, it is insanity to keep doing the same things over and over again.
Instead of old thinking by the city council, some who at one point or another caused today’s issues dating back 20-years, there should be more critical thinking, elevating of good ideas, creating strong partnerships and finding ways to collaborate with anyone and everyone willing to work on a common goal and solution. Better yet, utilizing technology to reduce costs and improve processes—not stuck in the past. More importantly, from what I’ve observed Ms. Scott has attempted to bring a fractured community back together, despite phony rhetoric and personality conflicts, its quite refreshing she is hell bent on uniting everyone towards a common goal–and more importantly getting people on the same page.
What most people do not see, nor will they ever see, is what goes on day-to-day or behind the scenes as none of it makes headlines, which is the point of this post. Antioch is only a year into a new council and a city manager working to clean up 4-years of terrible management which not only is staff working to correct, but tackle all the new issues that come up—an impossible task when they are operating in a deficit. This is what happens when past elected officials care more about headlines and being reelected than the best interest of a city. Ultimately, it is staff who pays the price later to spend their time in cleanup mode, which is what Scott and department heads are working through. This then impacts the residents and businesses who are not getting services they should be receiving.
So here is what you won’t see in any headline but valuable work Ms. Scott and staff have accomplished this past year:
- Negotiation with DOJ,
- Negotiations the California DOJ
- Working to keep Antioch out of court oversight
- Bringing stability to staffing levels
- Implementing updates to systems and platforms
- Mitigating structure deficit & responsible spending
- Improving service delivery and processes
- Updating/Restructuring Housing Services Division
- Updating/Restructuring Code Enforcement and deployment
- Cutting waste in homeless spending/structure
- Countless hours spent repairing regional partnerships—including Contra Costa County.
- Legislative lobbying
- Federal Grant application (she knows where the money is)
Again, none of this makes headlines, but its valuable working being done that takes up a lot of time. All, while Ms. Scott has never been a city manager before. All while being denied of creating a core team in the city managers office–no assistant city manager, assistant and tools requested being denied. It is like the council is rooting for her to fail which is silly because then Antioch fails. Thus, Antioch resets to a new starting line which should be a non-starter.
A year ago I was wrong, but I like the progress given all the obstacles. A year from now, I hope her contract is renewed. Or, given this endorsement, any other city would be lucky to have her.
At this point, from my observations, a year after she was hired, it appears the city council has no clue how to use her and instead opted to begin micromanaging and holding her back–if you recall, the prior council got reprimanded by the grand jury for that. I say give her the freedom to showcase what she can do and begin working towards an Antioch that not only the community deserves, but all of Contra Costa County. If Antioch wins, the entire region wins because everyone is elevated.
I am glad my initial reaction was wrong as its much more fun cheer for the success for Ms. Scott than waiting for her to fail just to say “I told you so”.
Cheers to you Ms. Scott and Happy 1 Year Anniversary with the City of Antioch.
Mike Burkholder
Publisher of ContraCosta.news
[email protected]
