Fort Bragg City Council
August 8, 2022

From: Jacob Patterson
To: Lemos, June
Subject: Public Comment -- Item No. 8B
Date: Monday, August 8, 2022 9:13:33 AM
City Council,
I see no reason to not support this letter of support in concept but recommend revising a sentence that is literally accurate but misleading. The draft letter currently includes "Our organization brings to the table the collective knowledge and experience of our staff in the areas of community development and outreach, economic growth and development, financial management, and grants management." Technically, this is an accurate statement because it doesn't express any opinion regarding the competence or adequacy of the "collective knowledge and experience of our staff" in the listed areas but that is implied by including it at all. Our current staff is under-qualified and woefully ineffective concerning "community development and outreach, economic growth and development" although financial and grants management appear to be solid. Regardless, I think it would be better to revise the draft letter to omit this sentence altogether since the current City team is not bringing much to the table in these areas, at least not in my opinion. Addressing those issues and building actual competence and effectiveness should be job number one for the City's leadership team but it appears we are more interested in spinning a yarn and pretending that we are already on track. --Jacob