City Manager Namburi and Mayor Hoy said nothing interesting at Salem City Club

Disappointing. Boring. Uninteresting.

I could add more negative adjectives, but those do a good job of describing my reaction to what City Manager Krishna Namburi and Mayor Julie Hoy had to say at last Friday’s City Club program.

In short, not much of anything.

The first line of the email I got from the City Club plugging the program captured my attention. So I decided to attend.

Salem City Club is pleased to have Mayor Julie Hoy and City Manager Krishna Namburi address the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats for the city as we move forward in interesting times.

In retrospect, that description of the presentation was vague. As was the title: Salem Mayor Julie Hoy and City Manager Krishna Namburi: Sharing Their Vision for Salem in the Face of Reality.

In the face of reality? What the heck does that mean? How would someone not face reality? I mean, what is there besides reality?

Being philosophically inclined, I would have found a discussion of those questions hugely more interesting than what I heard from Namburi. She did 99% of the talking. Hoy didn’t say a word during the actual presentation, only briefly chiming in during the Q&A part of the program a few times.

Namburi had a slide presentation. She basically restated what was on the slides, which made for an utterly impersonal and non-spontaneous talk. I took a few notes, because doing that kept me awake.

Looking at my notes, I didn’t see anything substantive worth sharing in this blog post.

No, wait, I did place an asterisk by one of my notes, to remind me to mention it. An audience member with a question said this was a “theoretical presentation.” Nicely put. A gentler way of saying: Disappointing. Boring. Uninteresting.

To sum up what I remember of Namburi’s slide presentation…

City government has a management method that involves having goals related to various stuff; then they decide how to do stuff after talking with people interested in that stuff; after which they actually do that stuff; then they assess how well their doing of the stuff went.

You know, common sense. Or how every person on the planet operates in everyday life. But the slide presentation did have fancier words than what I said above.

Another way of putting it: the City of Salem really, really, really is trying to do a good job. They want to hear from Salem residents. They want to hear from the City Council. They want to hear from the squirrels in Bush Park. They want to hear from the pigeons in downtown Salem alleys. Because they’re really, really, really trying to do a good job.

I used to work in state government. I’m familiar with bureaucratic verbiage. I’ve spouted it myself. Which doesn’t mean that I enjoy hearing it.

I can’t recall a single unscripted, personal, authentic, revealing utterance from either Namburi or Hoy. I have to assume that was the goal of their presentation. Say not much of anything, then check a box on the City of Salem public outreach scorecard.

Mission accomplished.