'The Time For Petty Politics And Bickering Is Over': Letter To The Editor

Dear Editor,

There is a sense of betrayal and angst among many Dublin residents right now. Betrayed by the city council in their unending hunger for more residential construction without addressing basic infrastructure needs. Betrayed by the DUSD school board for aggressively pushing measure H with the promise of phase 1 of a new, comprehensive high school and lastly blaming the community for opposing the Zeiss site. I was amongst the minority who thought that safety was not a big concern with the Zeiss site; and that it was just too small a site to build any semblance of a high school. But as I sat in that school board meeting a couple of weeks ago, I was really struck by the passion and emotion emanating from speaker after speaker on the safety issue.

It was as though it had a raised a deep parental instinct to protect their children (see: Amy Miller’s comments at the meeting when she changed her vote) and that has now really awakened the community. Folks who were not paying attention before are now fully engaged and want answers to questions that remain unanswered.

I equate what is happening here with what happens in high growth company. You implement your systems and processes at the beginning to scale to a certain size. Then the company really takes off and gets into a high growth mode and the current systems and processes no longer scale. What do you do then? Do you throttle your growth or do implement short term manual work-arounds to keep growing?

Most companies (like DUSD) keep adding manual processes and short term fixes till it's no longer sustainable. The smart ones know when to pivot and re-haul their system. At that point, they need to make a huge long term commitment in terms of finance and resources to implement a complete system re-haul. All other projects and short term fixes are put on hold and viewed in context of the bigger, long term project. It’s the only way for the organization to survive and thrive long term. There is usually a lot of pain associated with holding off small projects and some stakeholders are not happy, but you've got to do it.

We have kicked this can far too down the road and have a huge high school education debt. The time for petty politics and bickering is over. Our kids and their future need to be at the front and center of every decision being made by the city and DUSD board. They need to come together to find the right land (be it Chen or Fallon or Promenade), develop a plan and budget for the high school and then plan construction or repairs other schools using that lens.

Go back to the developers to make them pay. Figure out a way to reduce construction costs. Eliminate overhead and non-essential spending. Make tough decisions. There will be some severe short term pains and some folks will not be happy but we should now be looking at our long term future as a community. No more quick fixes. No more band-aids. No more short term solutions.

This feels like a seminal moment in the history of the city of Dublin. We need our city council and DUSD leaders to show vision, innovation and execution chops to navigate us through these difficult times. Be the visionaries and leaders we elected you be. We will rally with you.

Thanks,

Hitendra Mishra