Unless you’ve been living under a heated, essential-oil-infused rock, you’ve no doubt heard the news: Today, in lieu of an actual meeting, City Council is instead moving on up to conference-center-in-day-spa-drag the Crossings for what is synergistically billed as an exercise in “team building” and “agenda setting.” Just don’t call it a “retreat” – even if that’s what it says on the agenda. With faux new-age astral projections like “Setting the Context” and “Dreams and Fears for the Community of Austin” on the schedule, the only quality-of-life council has stood to improve so far has been Statesman “humor” columnist John Kelso‘s – this shit writes itself, right? Sarah Coppola‘s reporting for the Statesman on the subject is rife with quotes from Brewster McCracken contemplating his “inner council member,” and Lee Leffingwell fearing “sitting around in circles and holding hands and singing songs.” But is such an assessment fair, or do those stuffed suits just need to relax and expand their parameters, man?
“I choose the term ‘workday,'” Will Wynn told us. While he might also prefer calling Barbie dolls action figures, it doesn’t change the fact that the retreat, however well-intentioned, is going down at an upscale lifestyle center on the city limits. Still, Wynn made a convincing case. “I’m looking forward to a productive planning session. City Council hasn’t done this since ’97, ’98; it was fairly common before that,” he said, before further setting the context (LOL!): “We have a measurable economic recovery; we’ll have just finished a very important municipal bond election. Meanwhile, we’re almost overrun with the number of initiatives floating around City Hall right now. We’re pulled in different directions; city staff especially is pulled in different directions. There’s been a notable ineffectiveness at City Hall in part because there’s so many things trying to happen.”
Much has been made of the retreat’s $16,000 price tag. But despite visions of a mud-masked city manager, the city is only shelling out an entirely reasonable $5,000 for conference rooms and lodging for seven council members, a staff member each, City Manager Toby Futrell, and her entourage. The $11,000 lion’s share goes to U. of Kansas facilitators Carol and John Nalbandian. Digging through Mr. Nalbandian’s curriculum vitae is a revealing wade through the fever swamps of a professional municipal policy wonk. One piece stands out – “The Manager as Political Leader,” which asks “What happens to a politically neutral chief administrative officer who is expected to act too politically?” Talk about fertile soil to till. No, the more BTP mulls it over, if the Nalbandians are only getting 11 grand to put the Toby-ocracy on the couch, they’re the ones in need of psychoanalysis.
Instead of seeing this retreat as a mystic pyramid scheme, we fear the opposite. If that “number of initiatives floating around City Hall” is realized any further, it’ll be like the scene in Ghostbusters where they blow the containment grid – but with Town Lake condos and $300 million rail lines instead of ghouls and goblins. To belabor these pop-Jungian metaphors a step further, what does the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man resemble, if not McCracken’s “inner council member”?
No, if anything, let’s blow that 16 large on seaweed wraps and hot stone massages. Let’s keep those goals and ambitions in the murky depths of council’s collective subconscious – where they belong.
This article appears in November 10 • 2006.