The Gilroy City Council spent 40 minutes or so during the
once-a-year annual retreat to talk about building a $35,000 bocce
ball court.
Does anything more need to be said about the city’s leadership
vacuum?
Councilman and mayoral candidate Dion Bracco and Mayor Al
Pinheiro led the bocce charge, thundering down the crushed-gravel
European outdoor bowling lane with wild-eyed enthusiastic gusto.
Meanwhile, Gilroy’s unemployment rate held steady at 15-plus
percent.
The Gilroy City Council spent 40 minutes or so during the once-a-year annual retreat to talk about building a $35,000 bocce ball court.
Does anything more need to be said about the city’s leadership vacuum?
Councilman and mayoral candidate Dion Bracco and Mayor Al Pinheiro led the bocce charge, thundering down the crushed-gravel European outdoor bowling lane with wild-eyed enthusiastic gusto. Meanwhile, Gilroy’s unemployment rate held steady at 15-plus percent. Meanwhile, graffiti vandalism has exploded at an alarming rate. Meanwhile, the high speed rail is coming, perhaps right smack through downtown. Meanwhile, the Downtown Business Association could use $35,000 to help pay someone to plan, organize and run downtown events. Meanwhile …
Meanwhile, where’s the Gong Show when we need it? Where is the Minister of Common Sense when we need her?
Complex issues that require common sense and beyond-the-basics thought are bouncing off the City Council like hail stones on the sidewalk.
When topics like bocce ball “rise to the top of the list” for a retreat topic, Pinheiro and Bracco deserve accolades like:
– The Gilroy Golden Fleece Award. Historians will remember the former U.S. Sen. William Proxmire’s government honor established in 1975 to “honor” wasting taxpayer’s money. The United States Department of the Army won it, for example, in 1981 for a study on how to buy Worcestershire sauce.
– The Illusion of Activity Award, given annually by the Dispatch Editorial Board to the government body that puffs out its chest furthest and dives into the least important civic discourse imaginable … like bocce ball.
– And last, but not least, the The Flying Fickle Finger of Fate Award. That’s a wholesale theft from Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In TV show bit circa 1970 which saluted dubious government achievements.
Our former mayor, Don Gage, who now represents South County on the Santa Clara Valley Water District Board, recently commented on the contentious nature of the Council and suggested the Council use the retreat to learn to put aside personal differences.
Unfortunately, that’s water under the bridge – or in this case a bocce ball already rolled. The contentious nature stems from the leadership issue.
One doesn’t have to look very deeply to understand what’s happening. For example, newly elected Councilman Peter Leroe-Muñoz didn’t say a word during the entire bocce ball discussion, no doubt choosing discretion as a new member. What’s he supposed to say without incurring the wrath of the mayor and a councilman who’s running for mayor?
Understandably, he’s trying to get along. But it gets tougher and tougher to get along when once-a-year goal setting sessions include bocce ball.
That “view from the top” is the problem. It festers and it breeds disharmony in our government.
