"Clearly your personal relationship and desire to protect Mr. Gerving on his quest to become City manager supersedes your duty as City Manager and obligations to the public. "

(Greg Sparks)

"Greg,

It sounds as if you have followed this thread for some time, which is all the more appalling that you would only interject yourself now that the conversation has grown to include the City’s  hired recruiter and council."

"Clearly the reason to include yourself, Mr. Black, City Council members, and our Counsel was taken in an effort to get someone to step to the plate to work to address the matters we’re facing with the City’s Bldg Dept, and specifically Mr. Gerving. "

"We have attempted to solve our issues at the department level and that didn’t work.  We subsequently involved you and that didn’t work.  We then got the City Attorney involved and that didn’t work.  We sued the City and that worked for the item we sued you on.  We now have a new issue that Mr. Gerving, nor yourself once again want to address.  Let’s be honest here, the issues are not new, nor are they any different than the issues the City faced the last time we were forced to litigate matters with the City in a last ditch effort to get action by the Building Dept. under your direction. "

"A clear examination of correspondence will reveal this is not an off the cuff action, but rather a hail-mary attempt to get the City to respond to our concerns.  Not only is it frustrating, but very disturbing that this matter has only garnered your attention after over a week, and several email exchanges, but more specifically after I have chosen to include the consultant selected on the City’s behalf to select and hire a new City Manager. "

"The most amusing part of this whole drama is the fact that you kindly ask to quarantine the issues, but yet do nothing to offer a solution. "

"As a business owner and manager of employees (similar to yourself as City Manager), not only is it my responsibility to ensure my employees perform their jobs, and perform their jobs to an acceptable standard, but that they perform them in a timely manner. "

"You’re absolutely blind, and completely ignorant to Mr. Gerving’s (COE Public Works Director and Building Official) performance if you won’t investigate and reach out to those within the building community.  Clearly your personal relationship and desire to protect Mr. Gerving on his quest to become City manager supersedes your duty as City Manager and obligations to the public.  On any given day I could fill a reasonably sized room in no less than a few hours with enough disgruntled customers of the COE’s Building Dept. to make your skin crawl.  Maybe you will recall the times we (you, myself and other unnamed individuals) sat in your office and told you this some time back and you chose to ignore the matter, yet here we are again, faced with the same arrogance and attitude.  Clearly nothing was gained or learned, not only by yourself, but by your building department head or council from our past actions, and my subsequent recent email exchange with Mr. Gerving. "

"Since you want to ‘de-escalate’ the matter, please provide me evidence you have actually investigated the matter, and please provide your solution.  More importantly though manage your employees (specifically your Public Works Director/Building Official), and please don’t endorse another era of a lack of management and ineptitude in Mr. Gerving for City manager. Clearly one that can’t even run their own department is not fit for running a city with a multitude of issues.  As stated many times before, this situation could have easily been avoided….again,  if Mr. Gerving could simply provide the requested information.  Since it’s clear that Mr. Gerving can’t do his job, and you can’t manage your department heads, I feel its necessary to make many others aware of the lack of management within the City of Eureka.  In closing, please note none of my questions to date have been answered.

TS"

I have linked my October 3 post which has the email thread between Travis Schneider and the City of Eureka. Listed above is Mr. Schneider's response to Eureka City Manager Greg Sparks.

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