A new report produced to increase the “effectiveness and cohesion” of AC Transit’s leadership was blasted at the agency’s board meeting Wednesday when members of the public and several board members themselves decried its recommendations as “undemocratic.”
David Schleef, a member of the East Bay Transit Riders Union, read a statement from the union at the Wednesday evening meeting in Oakland saying that the report “treats the community as a nuisance” and “would close the ears of the board to community feedback, isolate us from our elected representatives, hide customer service reports from us, and put the unelected general manager above the elected board president.”
The report, written by The Wathen Group, a New Jersey-based consultancy, recommends changes to the board’s operations and the way its members communicate. Ideas include committing to ongoing performance reviews for board members and adopting new guiding principles for ethics and behavior, such as a “pre-meeting check-in” with each other, presumably so the agency’s seven-member board is prepared and doesn’t appear angry or upset before public meetings…