Oneonta mayor chastises council

Apr. 18—Oneonta Mayor Mark Drnek's frustration with the Common Council's lack of engagement in his city transformation plans and what he sees as the members' tendency to micromanage city staff boiled over at a special council meeting Thursday, April 18.

Drnek delivered his remarks before the council went into a discussion about strategic plan development for the city.

The floorboards creaked under his feet as he reflected on his mayoral election campaign and the promises he made. He touched on his attempts to fulfill those promises by teambuilding through creating workgroups and taskforces.

"I was elected on my promise of a commitment to grassroots governance," he said, "with new and important opportunities for citizen engagement, neighbors helping neighbors, and building partnerships throughout the city to foster and support them."

He said he has felt "stymied" by the council in his efforts to move his plans forward.

"With all the important and changing initiatives," he said, "and with so many of them attracting grassroots engagement, I would have thought that a group of eight people would be more intrigued, would be excited to learn more and be looking for opportunities to assist."

He believes the council members should see themselves and their council offices as agents of change, but he has seen little buy-in from the council.

"In my first two-plus years here, there have been just a couple of council members want to dive in," Drnek said, "in ways that exceeded the norm of committee and commission meetings and the bare expectations of the charter ... There has been an unfathomable lack of interest among many council members. Thankfully not all, but for the majority of this council, there is no curiosity as to what is or needs to be planned."

He added that the problem in his eyes is that the council has been "preoccupied by an unhealthy affection from micromanagement and politics, and it saps our time, and the time and the energy and the self-worth of our staff, who are among the best and most talented people that I have ever worked with."

Drnek turned his comments to the reintroduced council committee on finance and human resources.

The committee stopped meeting at the beginning of the year at Drnek's direction, since he saw the committee as a "huge duplicator of effort and a time waster."

After hearing council complaint, he said during the April 2 council meeting that he would consider reinstating it. At the April 16 meeting, council member Scott Harrington, R-Sixth Ward, initiated that process by proposing a charter amendment to codify the committee, ensuring the committee's continued existence and population.

Drnek pushed back against claims that the council weren't kept informed of his rationale as time when on.

"You were told that the termination of the finance committee was an experiment," he said. "It was meant to be a major time saver, and then if it didn't work, I'd bring the committee back ... But by reinstating the committee, I will not be reopening the doors to micromanagement and to further abuse of our staff's time and to challenges of their competency or their motivations."

He concluded with a call to support his Downtown Renaissance plan, the funding for which council members have drawn into question.

"There is a COVID-level threat to our business community and we are the attending physicians," he said. "Our downtown will die without our immediate intercession."

Afterward, several council members said that they felt Drnek's speech about the dynamics between the council and mayor in regards to initiatives and decision-making was unprofessional and unwarranted.

"We do not work for the mayor," Scott Harrington, R-Sixth Ward, said. "We work for the residents ... I think if he feels that way, there's a obvious issue between sender and receiver. He may be sending it out one way, but we're not receiving it that way."

Kaytee Lipari Shue, D-Fourth Ward, said that she believes no one on the council disagrees with Drnek's intentions, but that questioning the methods is not inherently disrespectful.

"I was surprised to be publicly scolded by the mayor for having opinions that are contrary to his own," she said. "I cannot recall anyone being blatantly disrespectful to him, but rather I think that he felt disrespected because we didn't wholeheartedly agree that he's given us multiple opportunities to speak up."

She also said that if Drnek is asking the city to spend almost $100,000 on the Downtown Renaissance programming, "it's our not only our right, it's our responsibility to ensure that we all agree with the strategy. We're here to talk about strategic planning, right? and we all need to be involved in the strategy."

Len Carson, R-Fifth Ward, said that there needs to be cohesiveness between the city staff and council so the council can fulfill its role as financial stewards of the city.

"I think where he's frustrated is that, these were his ideas," Carson said. "Referencing 27 Market Street, he was having conversations with RSS eight to nine months before council ever heard anything about this. That's not working together. That's not being collaborative."