Clothmeister Cut
Tucson, Arizona. The Citizen has a short piece announcing the termination of Rio Nuevo director Greg Shelko, known for his recent stellar performance before the Arizona Senate Finance Committee in Phoenix. Hein had eliminated Shelko's position from the 2010 city budget (begins July 1) prior to his own demise. I imagine Shelko gets to swill his $126,000 salary through June 30.The ouster of Shelko, a certified clothmeister, represents the most significant blow to the cloth since I started this blog over 2 1/2 years ago. Are we approaching a tipping point of substantive action demanding genuine commitment to the community (and results) instead of self-serving non-performers? Employees of TREO, DTP, and MTCVB might want to dust off those resumes.
posted by x4mr at 12:01 AM
7 Comments:
Despite his high salary and significant responsibilities, I see Shelko as more of a Cloth Wannabe than real Cloth.
Even the Cloth didn't respect him much. Shelko was not taken seriously in SALC and TREO circles.
He always reminded me of the banjo player at a Shakey's.
Unfortunately, until the City's house is completely cleaned, we'll see Jaret Barr being allowed to exercise even more power. He's the only one left who knows what's going on.
The firing of Hein was a more significant blow to the Cloth than Shelko, that's just my opinion. Firing Hein (temporarily at least) undercuts the Cloth-y influence of the more entrenched Cloth-meisters like Larry Hecker. Firing Shelko has no effect on characters like LH. Shelko just did what Hein told him to do, which made him a very expensive lackey.
It's been a very good week for change.
There is still a very dangerous force running loose in City Hall, though, and he may be allowed to stay on and cause more damage because he knows so much about what Hein and he were cooking. That is Jaret Barr. The council needs to figure out how to get Barr to move along, and it won't be as easy as eliminating his position.
I heard Trasoff on the "Wake Up Tucson" show yesterday morning, and she gave the City's performance on Rio Nuevo the last 3 years: B+. When pressed to name something that Hein didn't do well, she struggled and then said he didn't always communicate well, but that was only because he was so busy. The host said that for a $211,000 salary, he knew what he was getting into as far as being busy, and he didn't have much sympathy for him.
Sure, Hein was busy. He arranged his staff so that only a few loyalists were empowered. After eliminating a few assistant city managers and other senior staff in his first year in office, he didn't replace those people. He wanted everyone that was left to answer to him directly with no layer of middle or upper-management to get in his way. He made himself and Jaret very busy that way, but now we are left with very few internal candidates to take over as CM.
Robish - Good comments.
x4mr - Sometimes I wonder about your images.
AZ Star led the paper with the Shelko story.
Good riddance.
Agree that Barr is a focal point and he's bureaucrat and probably somebody has his back?
Shelko's picture in the Star was right above the "Poo Monkey" from Magic Carpet Golf. Perfect.
Letcher, Miranda, and some council aides need to demand that Barr give up some of his secrets so that they can fire him without too many balls getting dropped.
Don't forget (like the local media who had a fawning relationship with Hein) that in Jan 2006 Hein dismantled the Rio Nuevo office (fired Randy Emerson and sent what was left of the office to TCC) and took direct control of the project. But he continually found scape goats. When the first arena project mysteriously was "over budget" and cancelled, Rick Singer was sent packing over to the Fox. Shelko was roundly critcized for his performance before a legislative committee in February but no one asked why such an important task wasn't handled by Hein. Now the Rio Nuevo is set to be changed by the legislature Shelko is the only one left.
Shelko and Singer have been human shields for Hein to hide behind.
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