Hutchinson's no good, very bad day
Inability to set aside grievances, think of the future, is already costing Hutchinson
I expect tonight’s Hutchinson City Council meeting will be a hot one.
Instead of taking the advice of nearly everyone in the city to just leave HutchRec alone and move on to one of the many other very real and pressing issues in our city, the city has taken the odd approach of adding an educational session on the agenda.
The topic will be how Recreation Commissions exist throughout the state, and the professor will be the City of Hutchinson, which hasn’t ever run its own Recreation Commission. Also, we’ve had this lesson already.
We’ll be told this is being done in the spirit of education, and to have a conversation about whether there are efficiencies to be found by absorbing HutchRec into the city. And, we’ll be told that’s not the ultimate goal - we’re just asking questions here, and what could be wrong with asking questions? But anyone with a lick of sense who’s been paying attention at all knows there’s no other goal at all. For any member of City Staff or the City Council to pretend otherwise is disingenuous.
If you haven’t been paying attention, here’s a quick rundown of the past couple months - at least the parts I’ve been privy to be a part of or know about.
On March 2, a young man made his first public appearance into Hutchinson government/politics by making a very specific open records request to the city for a memo from 1994 that suggested the idea of pulling HutchRec and the Hutchinson Public Library under the city. (It’s worth noting that this same person also served as treasurer for an ad hoc committee that purchased electronic billboards in support of the city’s sales tax initiative.) His request was fulfilled in less than a day, and on March 3, he spoke in public comment to the council, suggesting that they should again consider saving money by bringing HutchRec and the library under city control.
Note: I can confidently say that I have more experience with open records requests than probably anyone in Hutchinson. I have never had a request completed in a day. Normally, the agency has 3-days to respond to even acknowledge receipt of a request and they take it. Making a request specific and time bound enough is difficult - unless you have information that allows you to craft a very detailed request. Even then, documents from the 90s are not often digitized, and not often so close at hand they can be processed and delivered on such short notice. That has been my experience in more than 20 years of work in journalism and advocacy. And I want to be very clear about something - the issue here isn’t that a young person got involved in politics. Quite the contrary - I wish an entire legion of young people would start asking questions about how and what local government is doing. The part that feels unusual and, frankly, untoward, here is the city’s robust, immediate, and enthusiastic response to that question. The city council is setting precedent where anyone who presents anything to the council must be taken just as seriously, or risk accusations that they are applying their power unevenly and unfairly. I imagine if a resident asked for a similar study about efficiency in the police or fire department, we wouldn’t be witnessing the rush to study that we’ve seen here. That brings into the question the validity of claims that this isn’t about personalities.
During the next month or so, there are a number of conversations among stakeholders about the matter. There were questions about why this is coming up now, and why the city council seemed so poised to act on this young man’s suggestion - which if you watch the video wasn’t simply to study HutchRec, it was to study the absorption of HutchRec. Again, from the outset of this, the clear intent was to eliminate HutchRec. It was never about how to make HutchRec work better, or more efficient. On the same night that the City won its sales tax vote, the effort to make its grab was taking place in council chambers.
In some of the conversations I had with HutchRec board members, there was a great deal of confusion about what had happened between December and March to reignite old tensions. The City Manager had come to the HutchRec board meeting in December and expressed a desire to want to get past their differences and build a productive relationship. The board chair at the time also sent an email to the city manager thanking him for his graciousness and willingness to work together. But something changed between December and March, and no one on the HutchRec knows what. They all felt blindsided by the movements in March.
Later in March and early April, I visited with several council members and City Manager Enrico Villegas, who had previously been on my podcast to talk about the city’s proposed 3/4 cent sales tax, which won a slim margin on March 3. Some of the conversations were lengthy. I expressed my concern that a protracted and public fight between the City of Hutchinson and HutchRec would harm the city - and throw away any of the goodwill that had been found in the conversations of the previous month or so around the sales tax vote. There, to me, seemed to be a sense of renewed optimism about the future of our city. A belief that maybe we had turned a corner and there was reason to feel good about our city. I thought such a fight would fracture the people most involved in the city, and would eventually pit different parts of the community against one another. I also anticipate that should the city move to eliminate HutchRec, there will be a protest petition to force a public vote - which the city must pay to hold. I saw no good coming from such a fight and determined the underlying issue is that HutchRec and the City have not developed a comprehensive MOU or operating agreement.
On the afternoon of April 2, I secured a promise by both the city manager and the management and board of HutchRec to call a truce, and work toward developing an agreement that would create a better framework for working together. I suggested the use of a mediator, and the inclusion of a dispute resolution process to handle future agreements. Here’s the email I sent to all parties.
On the afternoon of April 7, just a few hours before the now-infamous city council meeting, the city manager called me and said he was in a “political quagmire” and asked if I could help him navigate it. He indicated that three city council members asked him to draw his display of how recreation commissions are formed. I told him that I thought if he did that and brought up the topic of absorbing HutchRec, that would be seen as a violation of the agreement and all the good faith discussions would fall apart. I’ve also gotten word that as early as noon that day, the city IT department was setting up for the city manager’s anticipated presentation about HutchRec. Early on in the meeting, the same young man who approached the council on March 3 expressed his frustration that some had accused him of being a “plant.” That, and comments that followed, reignited the entire fight and conversation about eliminating HutchRec.
That is in no way a comprehensive examination - a lot of other people have had a lot of other conversations and asked a number of other questions about these issues.
I had really hoped there could be a reasonable resolution that would’ve strengthened the relationship between HutchRec and the City and move this issue forward. Instead, it seems like we’re going to be in for a long, drawn out battle that doesn’t need to happen. At all. It’s nonsense, and it’s going to damage relationships across the board - and we’ll spend good money for yet another study when we have a study that already told us there’s no savings to be found.
And on that, I’ll add another point - if the City of Hutchinson is really interested in saving money and finding efficiencies, I’d argue that it makes far more sense to look at its own messes before trying to point a finger at someone else’s. And like I said before - now that I know it just takes a few minutes of public comment to whet the City Council’s appetite for any study anyone might suggest, I expect we might be in for a mighty fun ride.
But I’ll start with a free money-saving idea that doesn’t require a bit of study to find a significant amount of savings.
Stop paying out-of-state production companies $26,300 to produce a feel-good video to help win awards from a professional organization - that might make a person feel mighty specials, but don’t do one worthwhile thing for our city.
And if you are going to pay that much for promotional work to professional organizations, maybe think about shopping local.
Note: I want to be clear here that I have in the past, and continue to work directly with HutchRec in a number of ways, including serving as a member of Bike/Walk Hutch. For a number of years, I’ve partnered with HutchRec, participated in their events, and volunteered to help with some of their activities. I coached boys playing basketball for a couple years when my kids were young. I have also partnered with the city to promote some of their initiatives, and publicly supported their additional sales tax efforts, and will continue to serve the best interests of our city however I can - be it through the city of Hutchinson or HutchRec.