OPINION
By Dave Price
Daily Post Editor
Palo Alto City Manager Ed Shikada has locked down City Hall and members of the public can’t visit most parts of the building without an employee with a key card.
The City Hall lockdown started in March 2020 when the government was telling people they needed to confine themselves in their homes for three weeks to “flatten the curve.”
The lockdown was never brought to City Council for a public discussion or an up-or-down vote.
Post Reporter Braden Cartwright was told last week that the move was to increase safety for city workers.
He asked the city for examples of the harm that has come to city workers because the upper floors were accessible to the public. He received no examples, which makes me think the safety argument is B.S., and there’s another reason why the upper floors have been locked off.
I think the city workers don’t want the public to find out how many of them don’t show up to work, or arrive late and leave early. They don’t have time clocks. It’s the honor system. Palo Alto doesn’t have an independent city auditor to keep an eye on these things.
The last time I was up there, before the pandemic, I saw employees playing solitaire on their computers and a receptionist who was doing her nails.
If the upstairs are locked off, there’s no way to know if anybody is working there. At council meetings, Shikada constantly tells council he doesn’t have enough employees to take on more tasks or move more quickly on those tasks already assigned by council. But in the past, walking through the building gave the impression of a city workforce that isn’t energized. They watch the clock while they get top pay along with lifetime pensions and health insurance.
The upstairs lockdown isn’t the only change. When you walk into the building, the counter to the right has been abandoned too. That’s where you would pay a utility bill or a parking ticket. It’s been replaced with a machine.
I wonder whether our well-paid city workers have decided that they no longer want to rub elbows with the working-class people who pay the bills? Maybe we, the public, have become rabble to them?
This seems to fit the city’s new PR strategy of sharply limiting information available to the press.
Columnist Diana Diamond deserves credit for exposing this lockdown. God knows the city wasn’t going to mention it.
Council should look into this lockdown. I know that Shikada will object to any discussion of it at council. But he’s not the decision-maker. Council members are the boss — they’re the ones elected by the people, not the city manager. The manager works for the council, not the other way around. This idea of locking off a public building from the public without a vote of council strikes me as a case of the inmates running the asylum.
Editor Dave Price’s column appears on Mondays. His email address is [email protected].
This gives Palo Alto a black eye. Instead of welcoming to residents, city employees have become downright hostile. Get rid of the incumbents who run for re-election next fall.
This is a very disturbing set of circumstances. Shikada and his senior team have taken the “tail wagging dog” dynamic to an entirely new (and wrong) level. Local history suggests that nothing will come of this. All seven council members should be appalled and concerned; it will be interesting to see if we have elected people of courage – or not. Two of our seven council members are now focused on higher office and four are probably focused on becoming mayor. Mayor Kou might take this on, but this level issue requires a united front. Shikada, who was recently given a salary increase by CC, knows that there isn’t a united front and my guess is that he knows he can do as he pleases. And that appears to include not prioritizing submitting a compliant housing plan.
It’s never good when too much power rests with one person. Palo Alto CC needs to step up and provide checks and balances.
The solution is simple: biometric time clocks. Employees need to check in when they arrive and check out when they go. To make sure they’re not getting a coworker to check in for them, get a biometric time clock. The money this would save would pay for the clock in a week.