Now that roughly a month has gone by since the Auburn City Council adopted a spending plan for 2007-08, the question for some is, “Does this become a rigid document that is followed to the letter without planning for the future or is this the template for implementing changes culminating in the 2008-09 budget?” Clearly City Manager Mark Palesh is not letting any grass grow under his feet when it comes to making changes in the city's structural makeup. Thursday's scheduled vote on doing away with the city's Civil Service Commission may just be the first in a series of changes that he puts forth to change the makeup of city hall.

It is also not clear if the departure, within the next several weeks of long time City Treasurer Marie Nellenbeck, will result in Palesh putting forth some form of a restructuring plan for the city's management.

It can only be hoped, that unlike some of his predecessors, that he knows that budget time is not the time to unveil new ideas, especially when it comes to changing the way Auburn has “always done business.” There are two recent examples of how this doesn't work.

The ill-fated solid waste fee #- that for the most part was scrapped in its embryonic stages, prior to even getting to a vote, occurred because opponents of the idea where able to counter it more quickly than Palesh, his staff and supporters could deal with criticism. The idea of “ready, fire, aim” might be a model that private sector management gurus can tout, but it is almost impossible to do in the public sector.

While most of the work for creating the fee was done prior to his coming to city hall in the spring without his input, it is likely that he learned a valuable lesson about how Auburn does and, in this case, doesn't work. Given extra time he might have been able to roll out a more well thought out, detailed plan. Doing so would have allowed him to formulate stronger ideas and arguments for implementation.

The resulting limited trash fee that has been put in place, has a myriad of problems, and will likely create more hardships for human service organizations, not for profits and anti-poverty groups than originally envisioned. This is another example of not allowing more time for proper planning and doing something on the fly.

There is little question that solid waste and how it is financially handled by Auburn is a problem that needs to be addressed. But like most big issues #- it can't just be served up to the public in May to be implemented less than 60 days later.

Cosentino is a former mayor of Auburn and can be contacted at cozguytho@aol.com