One of the most difficult tasks to master over the last seven years at the helm of the Davis Vanguard has been to differentiate between legitimate news and inside baseball gossip. What would have seemed to me to have been a relatively benign post by Matt Williams in response to the Vanguard‘s Sunday commentary triggered a full-on avalanche of activity behind the scenes.
A slew of communications have been directed my way, some of which implicate me by name.
Matt Williams wrote that Kemble Pope was hired as the Executive Director of the Davis Chamber in February 2012 and, from 2005 to 2010, Mr. Pope “served as a member and chairman of the Davis Open Space and Habitat Commission.”
Here is the key part, “Coincidentally, the Mace 391 Easement process with NRCS and Yolo Land Trust started in 2010 during Kemble’s tenure on the Commission. He clearly knew that this freight train was coming down the tracks (A) throughout the time he has been active with the Chamber and (B) throughout the time he has been the Chamber’s Executive Director.”
Matt Williams would write, “What we saw in June was a Davis business community that was totally blindsided by how the placement of this Easement would affect the Eastern Innovation Park. That tells me that Kemble either never told anyone at the Chamber or DSIDE about it, or he was totally ineffective in how he told them.”
Kemble Pope took exception, believing that the implication was that he had intentionally misled the Chamber or kept it in the dark.
The problem here is that when the Mace 391 discussion came forward in June of this year, it caught many people off guard. Blame has been placed by some on David Morris, who proposed the idea of the land swap and using the Mace 391 site, that had been designated for a conservation easement, as a potential site for a business park, with the Shriner Property located east of Wildhorse on the north side of Covell Blvd. being proposed as a replacement for the conservation easement.
Matt Williams’ intention seemed to be to note that, while a lot of blame has been placed on Mr. Morris for the lack of transparency, there is a good amount of blame to go around.
For his part, Kemble Pope noted that the timeline suggests that he was off of the Open Space Commission by September of 2010 and the earliest Mace 391 was starting to be floated was in October 2010. As Mr. Pope notes, even then, there was not a mention of the NRCS grant.
He writes, “I knew next to nothing about Mace 391 until I heard some allusions to an ill-timed grant in mid-April 2013. Then, nothing until the day after I returned from a 3 week vacation in June 2013.”
The Vanguard, in other conversations following the June 3-2 vote to continue on the course for an NRCS grant, learned that there were discussions of at least the idea of a business park as early as February with the topic being raised at the Washington, DC. Cap-to-Cap in which Mr. Pope, among others, were in attendance.
There were many who questioned how the council itself suggested on June 11 that they were caught unaware of this when there were a number of documented closed session discussions and, again, several councilmembers attended Cap-to-Cap.
Given the intensity of the behind-the-scene discussions this week, one might be tempted to conclude that the lady doth protest too much. Why is the Chamber Executive Director worrying about a blog post on the Vanguard? I asked and apparently was not alone.
Mr. Pope explained his lack of knowledge as follows: “How is it possible that I went from deep in the OS&H/conservation conversation to very little awareness? Easy. I focused every bit of attention and energy that I had on growing my business, then I met the love of my life, I got a great (demanding) local job, we bought our first home, we got married and … well, I’ve been living my life.”
“Please stop playing fast and loose with other people’s reputations and casting aspersions about their character, integrity and quality of work.”
Fair enough.
From our perspective, the bigger problem is not what the Chamber Executive Director knew and when he knew it, but rather the entire process that seemed to occur for months without general public knowledge.
Even as late as June 3, 2013, when the Open Space and Habitat commission discussed the grant, the idea of a land swap was not put forward.
The staff report to that meeting reads, “The Yolo Land Trust, in partnership with the City, received a $1,125,000 Natural Resource Conversation Service (NRCS), grant on April 18, 2011 to permanently protect the farm. The grant amount was 50% of the appraised value of the conservation easement. On June 11th the City Council will discuss the status of the grant and relationship of the property to the larger concept of implementing the Urban Agricultural Transition buffer along the whole Mace curve. The NRCS grant deadline is June 15, 2013.”
The problem here was the general lack of transparency and discussion on this matter. Part of that problem was that the Shriner’s property did not become available until late in the process, and part of that problem was the impending grant application deadline of just four days after the June 11 meeting.
Council, lacking a lot of discussion and details and facing a deadline, made the call that they needed to vote down the staff-recommended land swap.
The Vanguard has two firm recommendations at this point. First, that the city needs to have a mechanism get to critical community-related issues into the public much sooner – even if the plan is not fully developed.
Certainly, if the city had been discussing foregoing the grant at the Mace Curve Property as early as February, the citizens could have had an opportunity to weigh in on the concept of putting a business park in that location.
The second recommendation is the same recommendation we had on Sunday.
The Vanguard has had two major policy concerns over its first seven years. First has been to limit the growth of Davis to preserve not only agricultural land, but also the unique character of this city. With the university, the growth potential here is enormous and city residents have fought to preserve Davis as a small city, right now at about 65,000 in population.
At the same time, the Vanguard has been concerned about the long-term fiscal sustainability of Davis. City services have been cut, budgets have been slashed. The city has done much of what it needs to do on its expenditure side, but the revenue side remains a concern.
With the costs of parcel taxes and the new water project, we would prefer that the city not continue to attempt to balance its budget through revenue enhancements like taxation.
That leaves us with economic development. While we believe there are densification opportunities within the city such as at Interland, the fact remains that if we do not find an acceptable location for new businesses to land, grow and ultimately expand, we will be losing out on revenue and innovation.
We need to do this in a responsible way and we need to have community dialogue and conversation. It needs to be an open and transparent process.
That does not mean that ultimately the city decides where and when and how it should utilize land for the purposes of a business park.
In order to pass a Measure R vote, any peripheral business park discussions will have to demonstrate both community benefit and reassure the slow-growth majority that this is not simply opening the door to sprawl.
A discussion that looks to develop on farmland has to have a mechanism to look at other farmland and preserve it as open space.
Both Dave Morris’ proposal from a few weeks ago and Matt Williams’ proposal suggest possibilities as to how a discussion could take place.
One alternative possibility that has been floated is that the city direct the effort to entitle Mace 391 as a business park. After all, currently this is city land and there can be an argument that the city and not a private middle person should direct the effort.
The Vanguard is not supporting any alternative at this time. Instead, it is supporting a process for discussing all alternatives. Ultimately, the Vanguard will not support any proposal that does not guarantee a considerable amount of agricultural land be protected from future development.
The bottom-line lesson, from our perspective, is that had the city been more transparent and forthcoming from the start, we would have avoided some of these problems. Ultimately, transparency is the answer because this is not a community that is going to take official assertions simply on faith.
—David M. Greenwald reporting
What I think needs more transparency is how these land deals are taking place and who is ending up with control of theses properties after the conservation easements are put in place. Is there a competitive bidding process? I have no idea but with millions in taxpayer money involved and thousands of acres changing hands it seems that the public deserves more information especially since tax dollars are being spent to preserve land the taxpayers will never have access to use.
It seems that the Open Space Commission and the business leaders who want the business park, many of whom are movers and shakers in the local Chamber of Commerce, are on opposite sides of this issue. So since it was the Open Space Commission members and the Yolo Land Trust members who blew up the 391 deal by creating a public outcry to a quiet consent calendar item Kemble Pope is in a precarious situation with his employers since he has worked for both organizations. This is probably why he is so sensitive to Matt’s claim because a lot of people are pissed at the Open Space Commission right now and if Pope had anything to do with the sandbagging of the Morris deal he is probably toast at his day job.
In the comments thread of Monday’s article, yeahmyam made the following comment.
[i]”[b]As this debate continues it becomes less clear, not more.[/b] Wasn’t the initial purchase clearly for open space and agriculture preservation 2-3 years ago? As part of that process the City applied for and received a grant to fulfill this goal. As much time passed, and perhaps priorities of some changed due to budget,economic, speculative, or political purposes it occured to some that this would be better leveraged. Thus a last minute proposal was put forth that forced staff to rush to Council since the grant money was expiring. This changed the intent of the original purchase and upset the open space contingency who worked hard over the previous 2 years to make this a reality? […] For strictly business purposes the [larger innovation park] certainly makes a compelling case, but at the expense of the open space process. I guess the point is, the rush job was the business contingent, not the grant. So why all the finger pointing?” [/i]
My response to yeahmyam then (and still is now) was . . .
I agree with your bolded first sentence 100% yeahmyam. 100%. In all the unclarity one thing has become very clear though . . . any statement that either the application for the easement grant was thoroughly vetted is a hard one to argue. Out of 65,000 citizens I doubt you could find many more than 100 who knew anything about the easement and/or its implications. Not many more than that had any sense of what the potential was for transforming that single purchase into substantially accomplishing the Measure O goal of the permanent protection of Davis’ Urban Fringe.
Here are some clarity questions that I find myself asking:
1) Was the easement ever agendized and/or discussed by the Finance and Budget Commission?
2) Was the easement ever agendized and/or discussed by the Innovation Task Force?
3) Was the Measure O achievement potential associated with the easement ever agendized and/or discussed by the Open Space and Habitat Commission?
4) Was the Measure O achievement potential associated with the easement ever agendized and/or discussed by City Council?
5) Does anyone in the Community have any understanding of what the Community Farm concept is?
6) At last night’s Open Space and Habitat Commission, Greg House (one of the chief architects of the Community Farm concept for the Mace 391 property (and for the community as a whole) asked the question of his fellow Commission members and of Mitch Sears, “How are we going to fund the Community Farm?”
7) How do the Community Farm at Mace 391 and the Community Farm proposed for the Cannery relate to one another?
There are lots more such questions, but those are a good starter set of “less clear” questions. There are plenty of events over the past three years that have resulted in our current situation of being “at the expense of the open space process” but the insularity of the open space process itself is at least partly to blame for the lack of community-wide clarity.
David posted that:
> Matt Williams wrote that Kemble Pope was hired as the
> Executive Director of the Davis Chamber in February 2012
The Davis Enterprise wrote on February 21, 2012:
“The Davis Chamber of Commerce announces that after a two-month search and selection process, Kemble K. Pope has been tapped to lead the Chamber as executive director”
Kemble Pope’s LinkedIn profile says he started at the Chamber in November of 2011??
Kemble Pope’s LinkedIn profile also says he started The Centaur Group in January 2004 (three months before he started working with “Rock the Vote”).
The Centaur Group web site says:
“Founded in 2011 as a partnership between Kari Fry and Kemble Pope, TCG began with a simple idea: improve quality of life and have fun doing it.”
The California Secretary of State database says the Centaur Group started 12/21/12.
It would be interesting to see when the Centaur Group really started and to find out more about who they have been representing.
It also looks like Kemble is not real good at keeping track of dates
believe he was interim director and then hired for the fulltime.
the centaur group seems like a strange deal and there seems like there are all sorts of conflicts of interest there. what do they do? who are their clients? what is kemble pope’s role? what is his relationship with kari fry? why does kari fry continue to use her influence with kemble and the chamber to get paid clients for tcg?
Wow, really? On a commentary about the need for transparency we get a series of unsubstantiated allegations and innuendo posted against a private citizen by a collection of anonymous wags?
Kemble Pope signs his name to his work. If you don’t like what he says, complain to his employer, or post away here, but in either case do it in an honest and open manner that allows him to respond in kind.
Hiding in the shadows and throwing mud is childish and of no benefit to anyone. Davis deserves better than this nonsense.
This is absurd. The Kemble Pope thing is a distraction/diversion. The crux of the matter is the following quote from Matt Williams:
“What we saw in June was a Davis business community that was totally blindsided by how the placement of this Easement would affect the Eastern Innovation Park…”
This is the crux of the matter because the statement is false. We know that elements of the business community were not at all blindsided. How do we know this? Because Rob White told us so on Sunday. Elements of the business community purposefully chose to delay action until June 11th. They could have taken action many months, perhaps years ago. To squeal now about the repercussions of their choice is entirely hypocritical.
-Michael Bisch
I agree wholeheartedly with this post title. And in the spirit of transparency, I’m going to post some details about my private business. None of this is secret and has been known by many people… but for those of you who don’t know me, Kari, or Chamber leadership, I can understand that it might be confusing.
We live in a small town, and many of us play many different roles and have diverse groups of friends and associates. In the business world, many of us have several different business interests. I can only speak for myself, but I always strive for transparency and full disclosure if there is even the slightest hint of a conflict of interest.
@South of Davis – Why are you so quick to assume “Kemble is not real good at keeping track of dates?” Why would you do a tiny amount of research, then make assumptions and ultimately question my competence? Why not call or email me for clarifications? I can be reached at 530-756-5160 and director (at) davischamber (dot) com. Everyone in the community will tell you that I have an open door policy and I always return phone calls and emails… it may take a few days, but they always get returned.
1) Davis Chamber of Commerce – Davis Progressive is correct, I was hired temporarily as Interim in November 2011 then permanently in February 2012. My agreement with Chamber in February 2012 was that I would wind down any existing clients, and I, personally, would not take any clients without first notifying the Board of Directors.
2) TCG – I had operated as an independent consultant for many years, but in early 2011 decided that I needed to bring in a business partner. In August 2011, I signed a three-year lease on an office downtown and shortly thereafter, Kari and I developed a cost sharing partnership agreement. When it rains, it pours… and just three months later was approached (out of the blue) about the Chamber position. Then, in late 2012, Kari needed to hire people to help her at TCG. We felt too exposed to liability, so decided to incorporate as an LLC which was completed in December 2012.
Let me repeat here, Davis Progressive, the dates you found on your Google search are all absolutely correct… you just didn’t understand, nor ask, for the nuanced details.
The Chamber’s BOD has always been fully aware of my role within TCG, which has evolved over time to the point that I currently spend about an hour or two per week talking with my business partner. As per my agreement with the BOD to wind down my clients at TCG, I have not received any income from TCG since June 2012 and there are no accruing future payouts.
Let me also take this opportunity to state, unequivocally, that I have one boss, in the form of the Board of Directors of the Davis Chamber of Commerce.
As for Davis Progressive’s question… there is nothing “strange” about TCG, perhaps a better word is “rare”. It is a consulting firm that does A LOT of pro bono work for local nonprofits. I suggest you check out the website to learn more. http://www.thecentaurgroup.com.
My relationship with Kari Fry? She is my business partner, she and her husband and my wife and I like to play card games together and we regularly spend time with their entire family (parents and children). Kari does NOT use her influence with me to get paid clients for TCG… If you have evidence otherwise, please present it. If you have a hunch otherwise, why don’t you call me and ask me about it? 530-756-5160.
I need to get back to work now. We’re in the heat of planning for 2014, which is shaping up to be a great year for the Davis Chamber of Commerce… and I’m confident for the entire community. I won’t be checking back in on this comment thread, so please email or call if you have any questions.
Onward and upward!
I am pretty sure it takes a City Council action to spend Measure O money for a $4,000,000 purchase and the resolution probably clearly stated what the purpose was for. When did that action take place? Can we get a copy of the resolution? Was it on the agenda? Was this City Council action taken before or after the Innovation Park Task Force started its work?
Lets work these dates into the “blindsided” & “sandbagged” conspiracy theories and personal attacks.
michael bisch: what evidence do you have that members of the business community pruposefully withheld the release of the info until june 11? it doesn’t make a of sense to me, since that delay killed the project.
kemble: thank you for clarifying my questions – they were sincere.
Kemble asks:
> @South of Davis – Why are you so quick to assume
> “Kemble is not real good at keeping track of dates?”
Frist off I want to thank you for the detailed response, this kind of “Transparency” is good for everyone.
Not to give you a hard time, but it is “your” LinkedIn page that has a different founding date than “your” company web site (and you had Justin actually make the Centaur LLC official with the state on yet another date).
It also sounds like you were not clear of exactly what happened when then you told David:
“I focused every bit of attention and energy that I had on growing my business, then I met the love of my life, I got a great (demanding) local job, we bought our first home, we got married and … well, I’ve been living my life.”
Thanks again for the detailed response, you might want to ask Kari to revise the Centaur web page where it talks about the date the company was “founded” to make things clear(and you can let her know that while she is updating the site she can fix the typo in her profile and add a space between “every” and “day”)…
[quote]Blame has been placed by some on David Morris, who proposed the idea of the land swap…[/quote]
At the time he proposed it, staff should have said ‘that site is presently under consideration for an easement, and the ______ commissions are holding public hearings about that. You’d better get your proposal before those commissions, get it agendized and and get public notice out about it.” If staff was negotiating with David Morris about the land swap idea, that was completely inappropriate.
We have commissions for a reason: they provide a venue and process for these things to be discussed in public. Anyone who is interested in a topic can see the agendas, attend the meetings, and give an opinion. If you don’t do it that way, you’re making backroom deals. Staff people know that, and should have said something about it. Council members who might have been casually apprised of the land swap idea should have known that, and said something about it.
So I seriously don’t get why a member of the OSH, regardless of his timing of his term, is somehow responsible for any of the lack of communication here. And it isn’t the job of the Chamber director to tell people what the procedures are. That is what staff does. That is what council members know and should do.
There is not, to my knowledge, any version of the land swap proposal before any commission in any form clear and concrete enough for us to even make a judgment as to its merits. If there is still interest in that, a specific proposal needs to go before the OSH commission, among others.
I’d say the proponents of anything-but-ag-easement had better get their act together and make a specific, detailed proposal before March. There is very little time to agendize anything for the city council. There is very little time to agendize anything for the commissions. Staff is on track to finalize the ag easement in late March, and that is their current directive from council. It is the only clear action that is before us at this time. I remain very uneasy and distrustful about the way the other proposal has come about.
I think Matt’s proposal has merit, but as I have noted on a previous thread it does not need to be linked to specifics about economic development. Most of what he is proposing can very likely be paid for from existing Measure O funds, leveraged to get more grant money. I urge that we de-couple his proposal from all the task force discussion.
David:
I think both you and Matt are shining your light on the wrong problem. The purchase of the Mace 391 property, and securing the grant award to help pay for a conservation easement, was a long-term project with many public and private discussions, though perhaps not much fanfare. At the same time, economic development has been an open discussion within the community and the City, with increasing public discourse around the subject over the same time period. The findings of the Innovation Task Force, with the recommendation of this same Mace 391 property as one of two or three potential sites for economic development around town was widely disseminated.
What seems not to have happened was a public discussion about the choice between the two possible outcomes for the site, and the impact that the choice could have on the City’s economic future. It was as if the two discussions where going on independently, with seemingly no one ‘aware’ of the mutually exclusive outcomes.
What I think needs to be examined is the nexus between those two discussions. Who among City Staff, City Council and the relevant Commision knew about both discussions, and either did not recognize the significance of the overlap, or did recognize it and chose to remain quiet about it. It appears to me that the drive to finalize the easement was being done as quietly as possible so as not to bring this conflict into the open. While I appreciate that David Morris kick started the public discussion, we should not have needed his land swap proposal to be the impetus for it. My conclusion at this point is that someone (or more likely a group of someones) has been pushing to get this deal done before the public became aware of the consequences
It was not the business community that was blind-sided by this process, it was all of us. So David, stop wasting time on Kemble Pope and David Morris. The real issues are who failed to connect the dots, who’s private agenda has been driving this process, and when-oh-when are we going to have an open and honest discussion about our economic future.
“michael bisch: what evidence do you have that members of the business community pruposefully withheld the release of the info until june 11? it doesn’t make a of sense to me, since that delay killed the project.” -DP
Again according to Rob, or perhaps it was Morris himself, they were waiting for Morris to lock down his Shriner’s purchase option or purchase agreement, or whatever connection he has with Shriner’s. That didn’t happen until May. They could have hit the “pause button” on Mace 391 long before then, but then Morris would no longer have been driving the boat. In other words, a straight forward community discussion about whether it was in the community’s best interest to put a conservation easement on Mace 391 could have been held long ago. It just would have happened without the Morris entanglement.
-Michael Bisch
And you’re right, DP, the delay has likely permanently removed the option of a portion of Mace 391 being part of a larger innovation park. Those that made the decision to delay now have to live with the consequences of their decision. All the caterwauling really serves no purpose. They should now focus on what is still possible. Given the foregoing, the Pope witch hunt makes no sense to me.
-Michael Bisch
I agree Michael unless Pope helped kill the Morris plan in contravention of the Chamber and I have no reason to say he did. Even then he would need to answer to the Chamber not the community.
“And you’re right, DP, the delay has likely permanently removed the option of a portion of Mace 391 being part of a larger innovation park.”
Maybe, maybe not. We will see, there are heavy hitters all over this thing so the jury is still out.
i guess i’m missing the witch hunt here. i think david was trying to lay out what this was about and then move us past it to the real problem which was transparency.
in fact mark, it seems david is agreeing with you comment: “It was not the business community that was blind-sided by this process, it was all of us.” the point of this post was that transparency would have fixed these problems and had the city been above the board from the start, we wouldn’t see aspersions hurtled toward morris or pope.
Toad, that’s what is so bizarre about the Williams/Greenwald line of attack. They don’t specifically state what the point is. It’s as if they think there’s a skeleton hidden in the closet without saying which skeleton and which closet. The only thing that’s clear is Pope is the target, but to what end?
Which “heavy hitters” are you referring to? Do we have any evidence that the “heavy hitters” are not satisfied with a 200 acre innovation park? I don’t recall hearing any of the heavy hitters saying one way or the other.
-Michael Bisch
Wow – sometimes as a relative newcomer to the Davis scene I feel like I have walked into a house where a decades-old family feud is roiling. Dishes thrown and broken, lots of yelling but absolutely no clue as to how we got here. Perhaps more than a family feud I feel like I am seeing tribal feuds like I used to see in West Africa. I remember it took me a full year of study during my dissertation to begin to tease out the history of alliances, grudges, deals and retribution that went on there. Guess I will have to do the same here.
I am with Mark West on this one. If we are going to have a community conversation about innovation parks, growing jobs and the intersection of both with land use decisions then let’s get to it. This article sheds no light and rather than achieving the transparency it purports to support it leads to the same confusion. This article has nothing to do with the conversation we need to have.
City Council has asked for an update on 391–it is not a question at this time of reversing the decision they made several weeks ago. I suggest that we use public comment time around that update to ask the CC to put in place an approach so we can have dialogue on this issue. We are here now and I see very little utility at this point in trying to define exactly how we got here. We need to have the conversation we are all (ostensibly) interested in having (or are we really just blowing smoke to settle old scores?).
One more point: if the easement grant goes forward I promise you the sky will not fall. It will seal off certain options but not all of them. We will find other ways forward. Let’s get busy because the sky is cracking under unsustainable unfunded liabilities that have been well-rehearsed here. We need a diverse approach to growing revenue and wasting our time on this childishness advances us not an inch towards what we really need.
Robb, I’ll explain how you’re entirely missing the point as soon as I locate my binky.
-Michael Bisch
One further point (apologies–I realize I am being a bit shrill). If anyone suspects or has evidence to the effect that public officials or City employees in Davis were engaged in illegal behavior then the remedy is laid out on the County’s website on the Grand Jury page:
[quote]Grand Juries make their own determinations about which governmental departments to review, although the law requires that some departments be reviewed annually. [b]In addition, citizens, local government officials and government employees may submit complaints about the action or performance of public officials and public agencies. [/b][/quote] (emphasis added)
Michael – i will buy you a new one. Looking forward to being enlightened (that is not sarcasm) because I am pretty damn frustrated.
Michael Bisch said . . .
[i]”Toad, that’s what is so bizarre about the Williams/Greenwald line of attack. They don’t specifically state what the point is.” [/i]
Actually Michael there is no [u]attack[/u] going on. There is simply a close to total failure of the vetting process. Mark West is 100% right when he says:
[i]”What seems not to have happened was a public discussion about the choice between the two possible outcomes for the site, and the impact that the choice could have on the City’s economic future. It was as if the two discussions where going on independently, with seemingly no one ‘aware’ of the mutually exclusive outcomes.”[/i]
You too are 100% right when you say:
[i]The crux of the matter is the following quote from Matt Williams:
“What we saw in June was a Davis business community that was totally blindsided by how the placement of this Easement would affect the Eastern Innovation Park…” [/i]
But you are 100% wrong when you say:
[i]”This is the crux of the matter because the statement is false.”[/i]
If you took a survey of all the Davis Downtown members prior to June 11th, what percentage of them would have known about the easement. Less than 10%, probably less than 5%. Can you provide a single agenda of a Davis Downtown meeting in the two and a half years of 2011, 2012 or 2013 where the easement and its impact on the Davis Business Community was discussed? I feel confident that you can’t.
Mark’s point and my point is that these kinds of discussions need to be mainstreamed into the community dialogue. We should have been talking about the easement application process actively and transparently in both 2011 and 2012. Waiting until 2013 is way, way, way too late. The OpenSpace and Habitat Commission should have been conducting joint meetings with both the Business and Economic Development Commission (BEDC) and with the Innovation Park Task Force. However, none of those cross pollination meetings took place because Davis makes most of its decisions in a siloed, reactive culture, rather than an open, proactive culture.
So what you saw as an attack is an observation that what Mark West is calling for is what we need. Nothing more, nothing less.
It’s as if they think there’s a skeleton hidden in the closet without saying which skeleton and which closet. The only thing that’s clear is Pope is the target, but to what end?
Which “heavy hitters” are you referring to? Do we have any evidence that the “heavy hitters” are not satisfied with a 200 acre innovation park? I don’t recall hearing any of the heavy hitters saying one way or the other.
I forgot to delete the end of Michael’s quote about skeletons and Pope as the target. My bad.
I think I have made it crystal clear in my comment above that no individual was a target, and any skeletons that are hidden in any closets are purely a figment of Michael’s fertile imagination. This is about a community culture, not about any specific individuals.
“Which “heavy hitters” are you referring to?”
Schilling, Medaris and the others who turned up at public comment.