Sweet Young Elijah Finds an Acorn

As the saying goes about the sooner or later discovery by the blind pig.

In this instance the issue was the lack of the actual solid waste RFP document in Tuesday’s presentation to the Fullerton City Council. Tender Elijah popped up during public comments to note this omission, and he was right to do so.

Maybe innocent Elijah came across this on his own – it’s pretty blatant. Or maybe he got it from my FFFF colleague Disillusioned Ex-hippy, who wrote this on Monday:

“Item 21 is the start of something big. Fullerton’s trash service contract is coming up in June, 2027 and staff wants to issue a Request for Proposal (RFP). The RFP solicitation document itself remains a mystery to the public because it isn’t attached to the agenda. Sorry.“

This sort of thing makes everybody look bad. The City staffer who got up to explain how come the actual document was not attached to the staff report gave the lamest of lame explanations: the ad hoc committee looked at it.

The bare fact that this actually happened bespeaks a culture in which the bureaucracy assumes the council won’t read anything more complicated than a Denny’s menu and will rely on staff to tell them what to do. This doesn’t happen in a vacuum. The sad fact is that most electeds are more interested in photo ops than in doing any real work. And reading documents you are voting on takes effort.