While viewing our Town COW-ncil meeting of October 23rd, we herd the Cow-ncil give Susan George a raise. We’ve been moo-ulling over this ever since wondering why the Cow-ncil is rewarding her with $175,000 a year salary plus possible bonus when a number of important issues raised by the Cow-munity have been ignored. Well, we can’t answer that question, but what we can answer is what she has not done.

Refer back to our articles Cow’d on November 25th, 2005 and Where’s the Beef? on January 26th, 2006, and you will see that Susan George accepted full responsibility for many concerns regarding the permit process in the Town. There were complaints of poor customer service, unreturned phone calls, arbitrariness in decisions, and just a nonsensical process as a whole. Some citizens even reported that there are architects and contractors out there that will not work in Woodside as they do not want to deal with the ridiCOW-lous process!

We expected that Susan would have addressed, and the COW-cil would have followed up, at least, on the most serious charge that Town staff has retaliated against people by holding up or denying their permits. We have been moo-ing about retaliation for a long time and a poll which we conducted in May of 2006 identified it as a wide spread perception. Even The Almanac wrote about it here. When a hearing was held on the matter, we felt that the Cow-ncil was finally on the right track and would make sure COW-munity members where listened to and protected. Unfortunately, they must not have taken the concerns seriously since nothing at all has been done. Just like jerky, looks like we were left out to dry here in the pastures.

Sure, we have herd that Susan has had a few meetings here and there. But our question is – where is the report to the Town Cow-ncil and the Cow-munity on the outcome of these meetings? The process sure hasn’t changed one bit and may be even more Cow-ntentious than before! Two years have passed and since claiming responsibility, Susan George has failed to perform. That brings us back to our original question – what has she done to deserve that raise?

Anonymous, I agree that an entirely independent review is the only way to get real answers. Don’t really have much faith though that it would happen soon or willingly.

Jumps obviously the council does not care to look into any issues regarding retaliation. Is it because they are being compensated in some way that would come to light if this were investigated? They need to take a hard look at themselves and what is going on in this town. If they have any self respect whatsoever they will start to truly investigate by using an outside source picked by someone other than this town manager, someone perhaps picked by citizens and who does not have an interest in the outcome other than it being the full truth. Someday soon the damn will burst and all will come out.

I was wondering about what happened with the reports on retaliation by staff. Apparently nothing has been done? Is it coming back before Council? Or, is that the point that this Council does not care about these allegations?

How much was she making before? How large was this raise?