Opinion - When Will The Elk Grove City Council Stop Squandering Taxpayer Money on Useless, Speculative Push Polls?

By Michael Monasky | February 28, 2018 |

Re: Item 10.1: Godbe public relations study; increasing taxes; 
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The city council has done it again. Elk Grove's policymakers have paid multiple tens of thousands of dollars to Bryan Godbe, public relations wonk who has consistently refused to surrender his non-scientific survey data for confirmation by a neutral third party. Godbe's leading sampling questions deflect Elk Grove residents down the detour of increased taxation for services yet to be defined.

TheInstitute for Social Research at the California State University, Sacramento, has a long and respected track record in identifying the real needs of cities, departments of the State of California, and other public agencies. It's curious that the city council and the city manager are wont to engage such an esteemed and valued resource right here in our midst. Instead, the city has failed its citizens by backsliding into feel-good advertising studies like Godbe's.

The fact that the results of Godbe's advertising survey aren't available for public perusal prior to the scheduled council meeting is evidence that the individual members of this city council do not consider the needs of our people a first priority. The first priority of the members of this city council is the answer to this question: What can be done for the sponsors of my political campaign (read: land speculators, special trade unions, home builders) to maximize their contributions to me?

  

When will this city council stop spending taxpayer dollars on useless, speculative advertising samples? When will the members of this council begin to accept the real challenges they face with the voters?  While suffocated by crimes of larceny, Elk Grove does not need more money for police; it needs to expand its policies to require fair employment practices from the corporations that do business here. That includes a 50-percent increase in the minimum wage; endorsement of single payer health care; bolstering pension, sick leave, and vacation benefits for all who work and do labor here. This council must revisit its housing policies to make them less friendly to their political benefactors, and far less hostile to the people who would like to not only work here, but live here as well.

The members of this council are woefully ignorant of the social needs of our people.

No expenditure of funds or raising of taxes can fix that.