Another One Bites the Dust or What's That Smell?

George Kolb, Interim City Administrator takes the fall for Mayor Nick Guccione's lack of leadership, his contract cut short with his last day February 15th. That makes three Wentzville city employees he's personally sent to the unemployment line to cover for the simple fact that he does not know how to function in his own capacity. Although I suspect the infraction that cost Kolb his job goes much deeper I can see where Guccione would have an easier time terminating a short-time contract employee over a long-time city person but this is merely a Band-Aid and ignores the real problem. So the score for Guccione is: Gooch 3, Wentzville employees -3, he's winning. For a touchy-feely mayor who claims to believe in jobs he sure has a funny way of showing it, but of course it would be too much to ask him to fall on his own sword.

So, what's the solution? As anyone who reads the Wentzvillian knows, I firmly believe Mayor Guccione negligent, derelict, and incompitent—you cannot fix stupid. In my opinion, policy and employees of any business, including cities do not mesh well, after all, "rules are made to be broken." Is rule-breaking the problem? No, it's a symptom of the real problem—poor management. Unfortunately, when our top management is occupied spewing political platitudes, blaming others for his shortcomings, and busy trying to get aldermen elected who agree with him, it doesn't leave much time to manage a city of 29,000. Of course this thought alludes to having a manager who knows how to manage, in our case we do not. So what's the solution? In order to find the answer, we need to have a manager who has experience in managing people, our mayor is a first-rate butcher but cutting up chickens and being friends with the employees is not good management.

There's an old saying in the military and is also used in industry to bring order to employee disorder; "Fire one for effect." By firing a person other employees of the business become more conscience about their jobs. Mayor Guccione has fired three employees in his first ten months in office and is still having problems, so what's the problem? Nick Guccione is the problem.

It's difficult to remove a mayor from office but that's what needs to be done in Wentzville. Our mayor has no inclination to learn how to manage and incapable of learning how to run a city. The aldermen who are enabling Guccione's poor management skills need to stop now. The Board of Aldermen meeting of January 23rd was the first time I've seen Guccione under pressure since his campaign ethics discussions shortly after he was elected. The Aldermen were relentless and Guccione almost soiled himself. If Wentzville wants a solution, our aldermen are going to have to quit doing his job for him and make him responsible for poor management by keeping up the pressure even to the extent of public embarrassment. If they do, sooner or later they will smell something coming from his direction and know they are on the right track.