Surfergeeks

The NFL Superbowl is tomorrow. Yay. Whee.

Okay, now that we’ve gotten that useless piece of information out of the way – on to the good stuff.

First up – Survivor All-Stars premieres right after the Superbowl. Ratings stunt? Without a doubt. It will allow CBS to claim higher ratings than ever for a stupid sport event. Why? Because no one has the foggiest idea when the stupid thing is going to end. Therefore it is forcing us to tune into our local affiliate to watch how five minutes left on the clock can miraculously take a good half-hour to wind down. Still, Survivor is going to rock! If you want to know the final four or final two send me an email and I’ll tell you.

Next – London sucks. Okay, not all of London. Just our illustrious staff and elected personnel at City Hall. The past four years has brought almost nothing but shame and embarrassment to The Forest City. If any of you live in London you’re most likely well aware of the latest debacle to rock city council – the stress leave of one of its top city managers. For those that visit from outside the city here’s a quick recap: Back in October, Glenn Howlett, one of our city managers, was on vacation. It was most likely a nice vacation. Vacation’s usually are. Then some “senior” staff at City Hall decide to play a little joke on Mr. Howlett. Apparently he is the point person for preparing this big report on corporate revitilization or something. These staff members fabricate a document that appeared to originate with Board of Control that informed him the due date has been moved up and had it sent to him while he was on vacation. This apparently upset poor Mr. Howlett. In fact, this joke upset him so much that he has been on PAID stress leave since. That’s over two months of stress leave at his full $155,000 annual salary.

Now, if you’re not rolling your eyes already about the fact that a joke has caused this stress leave, just wait…there’s more. It appears that Mr. Howlett has retained a lawyer. This lawyer has previously worked for other disgraced city employees in negotiating huge, coffer-breaking severance packages. So, it looks as though this hard-working, over-stressed city manager is looking to bail on his job and wants a little golden parachute to take with him. Nothing like that has actually been stated by either him or his legal representation – that’s just my theory (well, okay, mine and pretty much everyone elses).

This guy needs to give his head a shake. A local reporter said it best – if he can’t handle this joke then perhaps he shouldn’t be in the position anyway.

Our City Hall is in very sad shape. Its staff is in thorough need of a house cleaning. Our newly elected council isn’t much different than the previous one – maybe a few different bodies. No change in policy though. They promised less close door meetings but have had 5 in the past 8 weeks. A new scandal on an almost weekly basis.

I really wish we could impeach the mayor…