Ramon Miguez retiring from the City of Dallas

I can't get over the notion that Ramon Miguez took one for the team.

To me, the most telling sentence in Dallas City Manager Mary Suhm's announcement that one of her assistant city managers was "retiring" was the one that began the final sentence of her memo: "Due to the current budget restraints we will be holding this position open for now." Then she attached an new organization chart to show how Mr. Miguez's responsibilities will be divvied up among the remaining ACMs.

The other reason I feel this way is because of something another ACM, who shall remain nameless, told me in passing at the budget town hall meeting Ms. Suhm conducted June 22 at the Jewish Community Center. An exercise was conducted at this meeting in which participants, each armed with red and green stickers, were asked to attach red stickers to areas designated on charts around the room where we felt the city could make budget cuts and green stickers where it shouldn't. This one ACM came up to me and said "Pete, please place a bunch of green stickers in the section marked 'City Manager's Office'." By the time I got to that chart, the City Manager's Office was jammed with red stickers. I dutifully put what green stickers I had left in there, but they were the only green stickers in that section.

Thinking back on that now, I have the feeling that this ACM already knew severe cutbacks were going to be made on Ms. Suhm's staff, but, at that time, none of the ACMs knew which one of them was going to go. Before the JCC meeting, the city had conducted two others of this type in other sections of the city and I'm betting those meetings produced a lot of red stickers in the city manager's office. The handwriting, as they say, was on the charts. I wouldn't be a bit surprised if Ms. Suhm didn't gather her "Gang of Five" (ACMs Ryan Evans, A.C. Gonzalez, Jill Jordan, Mr. Miguez and Forrest Turner) and asked each one to consider making her job a lot easier. Mr. Miguez volunteered, I'm betting.

In some ways, I'm surprised it wasn't Jill Jordan who bit the bullet. I was told by one of her contemporaries that she was on the verge of retiring a couple of years ago but was either talked out of it or overcame whatever it was that prompted her retirement thoughts. However, I also understand that Mr. Miguez has a sone or daughter, with whom he is very close, who is currently attending college somewhere that is further than a day's Greyhound ride from Dallas. I also believe he has "vacation" property he has developed or currently is developing somewhere in Latin America and may have just decided "I have my 20 years, my comfortable city pension (which is going to be equal to his current salary anyway), I really don't need these headaches anymore and I have some pleasing alternatives."

Whatever, I wish Mr. Miguez only the best. I had the opportunity to work with him and found him to be one of the many unsung heroes at City Hall. I always loved the way in which he could tell a city councilperson that he or she was full of it simply by starting off by saying "With all due respect ...." When you heard those words directed at a city councilperson, you just knew that (1) that councilperson was about to get it right between the eyes and (2) the councilperson would accept it gracefully, never really realizing what had just hit him or her.

Ms. Suhm asked me to return to City Hall during the Hurricane Katrina refugee crisis to handle communications for FEMA until it could send one of its communications hotshots down from Washington. For three days I witnessed Mr. Miguez assume leadership of a chaotic situation and restore it to order. If he had done the same job in England, he would have been knighted. He still deserves some kind of medal for that amazing performance.

My only criticism of Mr. Miguez was his memo writing. Not that they weren't well-written -- they were expertly worded; the problems with his memos stemmed from the fact that he was an engineer. Engineers are basically problem solvers and engineers aren't happy unless they have a problem to solve. The process of solving that problem is far more important to them than the solution of that problem, because, by definition, once the problem is solved, you no longer have a problem to keep you happy. (Following me on this?) Any time a major problem cropped up in the city, either the city manager or one of the ACMs would craft a memo to inform the members of the city council about it because there would be hell to pay if, say, a news reporter called a city council person about a situation the council person was not aware of, but would have been had someone on the city manager's staff issued some sort of communique about it.

I remember one particular two-page memo Mr. Miguez sent to council members, when I was working at the city, outlining some problem, although precisely what I can't remember now. At the time, however, it appeared very pressing and by the time I finished reading the first page (all these memos were routed through my office) I had the distinct feeling that the end of the world was at hand. I started reading the second page and Mr. Miguez's additional description of the problem made it seem even more dire. Then, in the final paragraph, at the bottom of page 2 of this single-spaced typed memo, he said essentially "Not to worry, though, our crack staff came up with an ingenious solution .." and reading it I shook my head in wonderment. "That was a brilliant way to fix this problem," I thought at the time. At the same time, I wondered how many city council persons read the memo all the way to the end before thinking about dashing out of city hall renouncing all their worldly possessions. In journalism jargon, Mr. Miguez buried the lead. I wish he would have begun this memo and others he wrote by saying "Your expert city staff has averted world annihilation by diverting the meteor from its course ..." But, like I said earlier, that's the engineer coming out in him.

However, that's a minor quibble.

It will be interesting to see how long this position goes unoccupied. The longer it is, the more my suspicions of what's really going on here are going to be confirmed. But, if and when the city starts seeing better financial times, Ms. Suhm has a couple of top-notch candidates on her staff right now who could succeed Mr. Miguez (it's going to be next to impossible to find someone to "replace" his talents and abilities). The first one that comes to mind is Dallas Water Utilities Director Jody Puckett. She has filled in admirably for Mr. Miguez on occasions, she was formerly director of Sanitation Services (and Water and Sanitation are two of the departments this ACM probably will oversee) and has a lot of experience in the city's budget office. Plus she is already held in high esteem by members of the City Council for her no-nonsense approach. In areas where she might not be well versed (although I can't think of any right now), Ms. Puckett will know exactly the right questions to ask to get the information she needs. I often sat in on department head meetings at the city in which the city manager or someone else would outline some new policy and when it came time for questions, Ms. Puckett was always the first one to ask one while the rest of us were scratching our heads trying to think of a question that needed to be asked. But when we heard Ms. Puckett's question, we all thought "Of course, that's the question! Why didn't I think of that?" Another candidate would be Sanitation Services Director Mary Nix who was recruited to the City of Dallas from the City of Irving to, among other things, solve the problem of a burning landfill in southeast Dallas that was the subject of a federal court order that had the very real potential of bankrupting the city. Ms. Nix developed an alternative plan that was embraced by Judge Barefoot Sanders and the community and, because of her efforts, that burning landfill was transformed from an environmental nightmare into the Trinity River Audubon Center. Since taking over as Sanitation director, she has, among other things, formulated and implemented the city's recycling programs. She is also the former president of the Texas Solid Waste Association of North America, whose testimony on matters concerning recycling and the environment are held in high esteem by the Texas Legislature.

But, Ramon, you need not worry about the person tabbed to take your place, if that time ever comes. Just carve out a wonderful rest of a life for you and the Miguez family. Bon voyage, Ramon, and may fortune smile on you wherever you may travel.