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Thursday, April 20, 2006
Diversity in Leadership: Comments on a public forum
The PCC Forum on Diversity in Leadership was a succesful event, despite an attempted hijacking.
Last night I attended a “Leadership Forum” event at Pueblo Community College. The specific event was titled “Diversity in Leadership” and the blurb in the Chieftain specifically stated that “Pueblo’s political diversity will be the topic of discussion…” The blurb listed three panel members.
Before the event I called and asked the young lady who returned my call (I think it was Tamara, President of the Student Senate) exactly how they were defining political diversity and were the three panelists a Democrat, a Republican and an Independent or maybe a Libertarian? She didn’t really know. She said “diversity” was kind of up to the panelists to define and they’d tried to pick a variety of people.
It turns out that using the word “political” was probably misleading, since, with one exception, Pueblo’s politics weren’t really discussed. Don’t get me wrong. I’m glad I went and several of the speakers had some very valuable and thought-provoking things to say.
Louella Cruz, however, attempted to hijack the forum into a political rally for herself. She is petitioning to run as the Democratic nominee for Pueblo County Clerk, since she wasn’t accepted as the candidate at the Democratic County Assembly last weekend. She openly asked people to sign her petition, and openly described her goals if elected as County Clerk. This is electioneering and is unacceptable in such a setting unless the other candidates have been given the opportunity to be present and participate on an equal footing.
Thursday, April 06, 2006
Littering and Poor English
Some thoughts on Pueblo’s image problem.
People keep wondering why Pueblo has an image problem. During the past week I experienced two things which might give us a clue.
Yesterday at about 2 in the afternoon as I was on my way to a meeting at the City Planning Office, I witnessed three men littering private property at the corner of D Street and Main with the remains of their soft drinks: cups containing ice. What made this especially bad was that the three men were driving and riding in a service body truck with the Pueblo City logo on the side. I suppose they could have stolen the truck, but it is more likely that they are City employees.
For those of you unfamiliar with the area, D and Main is one block off the Union Avenue Historic District, an area of hundred-year-old commercial buildings which is having problems with vacant, poorly-maintained properties. Having City employees dumping their trash a block away certainly doesn’t help.
I am also concerned about the level of morale displayed by this act. If a City employee won’t be a booster for his own city to the extent that he refrains from littering, what can you expect out of the rest of us?