The Newsroom

Operation Phoenix? Put kids to work cleaning up grafitti, Waterman Avenue, and downtown. Drop the free video games, counseling, and freebies.

This is something I hear a lot, with an emphasis on "work" (ie, getting paid). It teaches kids responsibility and the value of a dollar. As one who hires, I'm amazed at how many college graduates today have little or no work experience. I like this idea, and I wonder if a key to making it work is engaging the business community one way or another.

Wow what an opportunity…

(1) To start, a complete top tier management change. Sorry but the City Manager will try to find you something else somewhere else. Next seek and hire four (4) individuals who are dedicated, professionals and WANT to make a difference. A difference in the youth that surround each of the centers. A difference in the way each of the Centers have been run, and a difference in the way the tax payers perceive as to what is going on at these high visible Centers. Qualifications for the Program Manager and each Center Manager will be tailored to the needs of the needs of Program and the Center. However strong people skills will be a prerequisite.

(2) Mandatory training will be established for every person associated with the Phoenix Program. Training topics and duration as well as reoccurring or continuation training will be determined at a future date. Examples of suggested training topics are; NO transportation of any youth in personal vehicles. No enclosed area with youth one on one. No Center will be used for personal use after normal operating hours. All employee training will be completed within 6 month of starting employment. Training may be administered by the Center Managers.

(3) All levels of management and supervision associated with Operation Phoenix will undergo a background check. Drug testing will be a perquisite of employment and additional testing may be requested by the Program Manager or Center Manager at any time.

(4) I said four individuals; one for each Center, and one (1) person who will oversee the overall Phoenix Program, the Program Manager, who will be responsible, accountable and have the authority to get things done that pertain to the success of each Center and the overall health of the Program. If that means selling an idea to the Council and Mayor (after prior coordination with the City Manager), to receive necessary funding for unexpected expenditures, so be it. He will be accountable to the City Manager. Each of the Center’s Managers will report to the overall Program Manager. Each will have a defined and structured chain of management (command) at each Center (Team) which is posted in a visible area to ensure positive lines of communication are available and open. No employee jumps the management chain UNLESS the problem or concern is their direct supervisor or manager. However, the public is always welcome to confide or talk with any member of the management/supervisor team at any time.

(5) Each Center Manager with the oversight of the Program Manager will build his/her team that will facilitate the needs of their specific Center. All centers employees will be accountable to the Center Manager. Each Center will have a Shift Supervisor for each shift to include weekends or and special events. Depending on the Center, hours of operation will be determined based on need. The centers may be open 7 days a week depending on these needs or requirements and will be staffed accordingly. Each Center Shift Supervisor will rotate shifts every 60 days with other supervisors at their Center. This will allow the team to become more in tune with the specific needs of their Center overall and per shift. It will also allow subordinates to gain/learn from more than one person of leadership.

(6) Operation Phoenix will have and support a dress code for all employees. Center Manager will maintain a “casual-professional” demeanor (no tie). Each Center’s Shift Supervisor will be furnished with a collar T-shirt readily identifying him/her as the immediate point of contact for any issue or problem needing resolution. Each Center will have a different color. Wearing of the “Center colors” is terms of employment. No excuses.

(7) Positive communication is key to success. The Program Manager will hold weekly staff meetings that will rotate from each of the Centers acting as host. These semi-formal meetings will provide the Program Manager an opportunity to visit each of the centers on a scheduled basis and it will motivate the Center Manager to ensure his facility is maintained in acceptable fashion. The Program Manager will also not limit his visit to the Centers to just these meetings. Unscheduled unannounced visits will be mandatory for all Centers and on all shifts. The Center Manager will also have his presence felt on all shifts to include weekends. One of the strong points of the Program Manager will be an effective time manager to allow a portion of his time at the Centers.

(8) Each Center Manager will in turn hold his staff meeting within 24 hrs of the Program Managers meeting. These may be standing or previously scheduled meetings. They will facilitate the exchange of information from the Program Manager and above down to the teams. Each Shift Supervisor will in turn ensure all important information is shared with all levels of the Center’s team. Key points or issues (minutes) will be posted for the team’s review as needed.

(9) All Center Rules and Guidelines will be clearly posted and followed at all times. Shift Supervisors and Team Leaders will ensure compliance 100% of the time.

(10) The Program Manager along with each Center Manager will establish a guideline for measurement criteria (charts/ graphs known as “metrics”) that will allow each Center Manager and team to measure themselves for compliance and effectively. These metrics will be established as a team effort resulting in buy-in or acceptance by the team, (ownership). Monthly, these metrics will be reviewed at Shift Supervisors Center Manager meeting then at the Program Managers staff meeting which is held at the host Center. In the essence of time, only the Host Center Manager will review his team’s metrics at the Program Managers meeting.

(11) Each quarter the Centers will invite a select number of the other Centers management team to review the compliance issues that are mandatory and to familiarize themselves with the “competition” of the other Centers.

(12) Each Center will be funded and staffed to ensure proper levels of supervision is on sight and available at all times the Centers are open and the needs of the Centers are being adequately met.

(13) Each Center will establish a reporting and tracking system for facility work orders, equipment status and items on order.

(14) Every 90 days (3) months an inventory will be conducted by Center Manager or his designee for accountability of items that are deemed high theft or high use items.

(15) Every week the Shift Supervisor will be accountable to ensure all items or equipment is usable and is not broken and is available for use by the patrons of the Centers. If items are being misused or abused, the Shift Supervisor will resolve accordingly and report up the chain.

(16) To maintain continuity within the assigned teams of each Center, employees may not transfer to other Centers without 1 year at the assigned Center. This policy may be modified to meet Center needs or outstanding circumstances with the approval of the Center Managers and Program Managers concurrence.

Additional guidelines should be developed as the Operation Phoenix Program recovers from this period of failed management/supervision. Each Center is unique yet will have to maintain a commonality that will make the overall Operation Phoenix Program uniform and successful. With accountability, responsibility and authority placed in the correct places along with a structured well defined chain of command and coupled with adequate funding, this program is and could be assured success. Successful for the youth of each Center and successful for the City of San Bernardino and its residents.

Franchise it out, with neighborhood assns. running it alongside their ward councilmember.

Okay, should it be saved, we’ll set aside. But, where has a program like this worked elsewhere, in a city at least something like San Bernardino? Where’s the template? If there isn’t one, what does that tell us?

We might consider “Operation Phoenix” a brand. Now it has been tainted by about the worst possible charge, child molestation, whether true or not. The very OP term itself instead of conjuring up hope and compassion, now carries the taint of hurting the very people it was to benefit most. The bumbling public response in which accountability was a “who’s on first” routine didn’t help.

(Think of how different things would have been, after the fateful e-mail exchange, the response was immediately to call the police instead of “let’s meet.” Err on the side of caution. You’re dealing with kids. Plus, it’s CYA. Protect them, protect yourself. Doesn’t matter who the guy works for, or how he’s funded. On such decisions are careers made or lost, character revealed. Yeah, and even if you can't be prosecuted, it still looks really bad.)

To save OP (and this looks like the strategy now) you can come up with “a few bad apples” defense. Overall, the program, (so this defense goes) the OP idea was sound. It was just one person, maybe a couple more, who messed up. Don’t kill the whole thing for stupid misconduct that could have happened anywhere.

Hard sell. Particularly since the bad news seems to keep coming, and will come. The trial. The sentence. The civil trials. The costs. The personnel and civil service issues. Try putting a happy face on the program at the center of that.

It could be renamed, relaunched, reconfigured in some way, keeping the things that worked (what were they, anyway?), and discarding those that didn’t.

At the heart of any restructuring needs to be a clear chain of command. A clear mission statement. Measureable, definable, achievable goals. Not, “We’ll know in the next generation if this worked.” People won’t stand for it. They won’t pay for it.

Let’s add, relentless follow-up and accountability. I think it was easy to announce things and set goals, the fun stuff. It was much harder actually to do the day-to-day work, and to see that that work was done, and by qualified people. It wasn’t clear the strategy of stabilizing a neighborhood and then moving to another worked. When the attention went elsewhere, the situation reverted to what before it was.

It just might be (and likely is the case) that in some of these neighborhoods, familial relationships are so dysfunctional that kids spending a few hours in a community center won’t change them. (Again, where is the model for this stuff?)

The director has to be someone with experience in this field, social work, criminology, some blend that works. The previous director was unqualified to set it up, and unqualified to run it. It might be he was a hard-working, long hours, nice guy.

He had his Code Compliance officers running bounce houses, passing out burgers, and Christmas presents. What was that all about?

His idea of treating entire neighborhoods as victims in some way, in handing out charity, maybe that was traditionally part of the problem there, not to mention the condescension involved.

Outsiders are necessary to come in and change things, mostly not of the racial or ethnic make-up of those in the area – what message did that send?

The director apparently didn’t realize until the OP blew up his chain of command didn’t work and that the program was not funded adequately. I don’t recall his repeated, loud public pleas to change either of those items, or a threat to resign if these untenable conditions persisted.

Taking on what were in effect two fulltime jobs to show you’re a heckuva guy and can do anything – how’d that come out?

The Sun had a good idea about restoring confidence. Have an outside agency or board investigate, independently, find what went wrong and make recommendations, up to and including, are the Operation Phoenix goals feasible? Can an outside entity, city government, or whomever, effect the kind of lasting social changes this program wanted to accomplish? Commissions are used all the time, and frequently to good effect. Reagan after Iran-Contra, the various Social Security commissions, the 9/11 commission. You have a Crime Prevention Lab at Cal State. You have a Sheriff’s Academy with faculty. Use them. Get experts. Not the well-meaning but clueless amateurs.

It might be Phoenix expensively reinvented the wheel. Don’t we have schools that have after school programs? Don’t we have libraries that have reading programs, who would love to have more teens participating?

Be upfront about the costs. Relentless follow-up. I thought at one time the Mayor could do an FDR, like so. One program doesn’t work, try another. If that one doesn’t work, another.

Sometimes people with legal backgrounds think too much that way, the parsing legal way, the “what ifs,” and seeing things in purely legal terms, calibrating responses down to “on the one hand, on the other,” mush. Joe Six-Pack isn't going to read through a finely hone essay on what went wrong. Write and speak simply, understandably, and make it fit on a 3x5 card. I think that was a Ronald Reagan idea.

The Mayor’s the guy. He’s the one who’s going to have to save his signature program while at the same time dealing with a much, much tighter fiscal situation. Start with that commission idea. Take the heat, warts and all. You might find like John Kennedy did after the Bay of Pigs, popularity went up. A president impeached had higher approval ratings at than the current guy does at a similar time in his administration.

It seemed during the previous Mayor’s administration, the city turned a corner. That things really had improved, that there was a more hopeful spirit. Now, there’s that feeling of drift and disarray. You have that almost sick feeling of "Here we go again." The term "San Bernardino" used as a punchline, as in, "You don't want our city to be like ..."

By the way, the local newspaper editor running front page editorials and such, beating the drum for these programs, I thought you want it that bad, you run for office. I don't think at the height of Watergate the Washington Post ran front page editorials. About the only one I can recall doing that was William Loeb of the Manchester Union-Leader in New Hampshire, not really a role model.

As it is, with Mynesha’s Circle and other such advocacy, the Sun has had a role in this situation. (How’s Mynesha’s family doing, by the way? Are they Operation Phoenix participants? Have their conditions improved at all? Working? Off public assistance? Co-habiting still? One would hope they would be object lessons in how a family can turn around. Perhaps the Sun can check up?)

But back to OP. The Sun owes us good reporting on this. Save your advocacy for the editorial pages and keep them off the front pages. Your blogs seem popular. Question every facet of OP, including taking attendance figures and such at face value. I have a feeling some were a tad high, along with what the attendees were actually doing, like playing very, very expensive foosball as memorably shown once on a Sun photo.

Perhaps the OP problems can be turned around. Right now, doesn't look good.