Dori: Fred Podesta just another bureaucrat shuffled around city departments
Aug 3, 2018, 3:11 PM
(File photo)
(File photo)
The City of Seattle is essentially shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic.
Mayor Jenny Durkan announced yesterday that Fred Podesta will “direct the work of the Navigation Team at the Human Services Department and oversee expanded outreach” in order to “better align the city’s response to the homelessness crisis.”
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I’m wondering, what is this guy’s expertise? Because we’ve been talking the last couple days about a crazy guy stalking a woman who is trying to sell her home. We’ve got drug-addicted vagrants taking over our streets. We’ve got the highest property crime rate of any major city in the country.
Looking into this guy’s background, I found that former mayor and alleged child rapist Ed Murray, two years ago made then-head of Finance and Administrative Services Fred Podesta the new director of City Operations, his liaison to the other departments.
Hold the phone — two years ago, this guy was the head of Finance and Administration, and then he became the liaison to departments for an alleged child rapist. And yesterday, Fred Podesta becomes the new point person for homelessness? What kind of expertise is that? The only thing that these city bureaucrats have any “expertise” in is feathering their own nests, going from one job to another.
People who were on the alleged child rapist’s staff still pollute Jenny Durkan’s staff. These are people who tried to cover up and enable Murray, while disparaging the victims of alleged child rape. They worked behind the scenes, like Sally “Dime” Bagshaw, trying to keep someone whom almost everyone believed was a child rapist in the mayor’s office.
You can’t be an expert if you go to three jobs in a 25-month period. You don’t have the skill set to deal with this incredible homelessness crisis. All you have a skill set for is to make sure that you can keep your $100,000 salary. What you have is a city government full of people like Fred Podesta who are experts only in their own self-preservation.
This is the problem in Seattle that we are all facing right now. I had a long conversation this week with a cop in Lake Forest Park. He said their city council and mayor are incredibly supportive. You don’t have council members calling cops murderers. When there’s a 911 call, the cops actually respond. In Seattle, you come to believe that when you call 911, nothing is going to happen, because they’re so understaffed. I don’t care what Carmen Best says, there is so much de-policing and crime tolerance in Seattle right now that addicts are coming here from all over the country.
A guy who was head of Finances and Administrative Services 25 months ago, and then the alleged child rapist’s liaison to departments is not ready to lead the expanded Navigation Team. Do you think Seattle is a better place than it was five years ago? The alleged child rapist added 1,600 city employees. He added $200 million to the city’s payroll to have a city that has gotten dramatically worse. That’s because there are too many bureaucrats and not enough cops.
If they fired those 1,600 people who are completely unnecessary to the functioning of this city, then they’d have some money so that they could actually solve problems and not shuffle bureaucrats like deck chairs on the Titanic.
