As I watched a recent Lompoc City Council meeting, up popped Jim Mosby, a former councilmember who lost his seat to a political newcomer in a landslide and previously lost a bid to unseat the current mayor.
He was speaking during the final public comment period just before the end of the meeting. These comment periods are limited to three minutes; however, Mosby ran overtime while trying to lecture the council, and presumably the staff, on how a municipal budget works.
He claimed it was “illegal” to charge solid waste-rate payers a fee in advance for the periodic replacement of refuse collection vehicles. If he would have read the staff report, they explained it this way: “The revenues of the Solid Waste enterprise fund are intended to fully cover the City’s current and future Solid Waste operating and capital costs.”
Somehow Mosby feels he is more qualified to prepare a municipal budget than any of the city staff professionals with decades of experience in these matters. He previously questioned every item in the budget, sought employee reductions, and generally tried to micromanage the process.
In the past, he frequently asked scores of detailed questions to derail the budget hearings while trying to prove he was the smartest guy in the room. I guess he figures that if he’s elected again to serve, this recent performance qualifies him as an expert in public finance.
In past budget hearings he was proven wrong so many times that council watchers lost count.
In 2017 when Mosby was a councilmember, he presented a 12-point manifesto that “included reshuffling, reducing or eliminating certain staff positions, returning some executive salaries back to 2014 levels, reducing some departmental budgets to 2015 levels, and eliminating the economic development department altogether.”
When he got answers to his questions, and they didn’t fit his agenda, he tried again and again; kind of like a little kid asking “why” until he wears his parents out and he/she gets their way. I’ll give him credit, even though he consistently misses the mark, he is tenacious.
A municipal budget has a lot of moving parts; the budget in Lompoc has two distinct components, the tax supported General Fund and fee-funded Enterprise Funds. Each fund has a distinct set of rules concerning where revenue comes from and how it is to be used; that’s why you hire professionals to manage the finances of government.
Mosby has no experience at either running an organization the size and scope of the city of Lompoc, nor does he have any experience running a municipality.
In other words, he isn’t qualified to determine what is and isn’t necessary in the city budget, how the staff should be organized, or how replacement of expendable items such as trash collection equipment should be funded.
When proven wrong he retreats to impugning, directly or indirectly, the competence, integrity and efforts of the city staff, and specifically the city manager.
Of course, as a private citizen Mosby has the absolute right to ask questions, but if elected to office he is provided with a copy of the City Council Handbook, which contains procedural guidelines developed by previous council members based on their experiences.
The handbook specifically says council members are not to “impugn, directly or indirectly, the competence, integrity or efforts of the city staff,” which Mosby violated repeatedly the last time he served.
If you see his name on your ballot, vote for anyone else but Jim Mosby because his public demeanor, lack of knowledge, and lack of civility during public hearings disqualifies him for public service on any level.
— Ron Fink, a Lompoc resident since 1975, is retired from the aerospace industry. He has been following Lompoc politics since 1992, and after serving for 23 years appointed to various Lompoc commissions, retired from public service. The opinions expressed are his own.
