A Win-Win Proposition

The city manager has decided to keep the city council election on March 11. While such a dictum in any other city in America would draw howls of criticism by elected official due to the clear usurping of democratic principles and due to unnecessary spending, we need not concern ourselves with such nonsense here.

What we can do is offer the city manager a deal that is good for him and good for the citizenry of Marco Island.

We all know that the very first act of the next city council will be to summarily fire the city manager. So by the city manager keeping the election in March, the city manager is going against Collier County and the state of Florida (what else is new, right?), forcing the city to needlessly spend approximately $40,000, but most importantly, he will be hanging onto his job for another two months.

So let’s run the numbers. The city manager makes approximately $200,000 per year (including benefits), or approximately $16,500 per month. Hence, for the two months that the city manager is buying, he will earn approximately $33,000.

Here’s the win-win.

Win for the city manager: Let’s have the election in early January and in doing so we save $40,000 – which we immediately give to the city manager as soon as he is fired. The city manger is way ahead, earning an additional $7,000 plus he can get another job right away in a city far far away and in essence double his salary for those two month! A Win for the city manager!

Win for the city: In the meantime, the city will loose a little (out the $40,000), make a little (save $16,500/month until another city manager is hired) but … earn/recover a real fortune! How? Since the second act of the new city council will be to stop the STRP and since the third act of the new city council will be to recover the $1,000,000 in cleanup costs from “Quality” Enterprises, the city will be way way ahead of the game financially! A Win for the City!

And to consider the suggestion of some people that we all can’t be creative in this mess the present governance has gotten us into!

But let’s cover all sides (or all bets as they say in Vegas). The city manager is probably considering that the Hate Slate candidates will be elected and hence he will keep his job. Uhm …

In the immortal words of Inspector Harry Callahan, “… you’ve got to ask yourself the question ‘Do I feel lucky?’. Well do ya ____?”.