I have to wonder some times...

[Vandiablo]

As to white collar talent, there is a reason for looking hard for highly qualified and thus slightly high priced talent for city and county jobs.

When decisions and plans are made, there are profound ripple effects, be it water distribution, roadways, educations infrastructure projects, on multi million dollar porposals and budgets. That idea that we need to hire sharp people to do this is not a bad one.

Exactly. (...and written better than my reply would have been.)

Mismanaged cities can be quite annoying as well as dangerous. Just look at my neighbor, the District of Columbia. They're on their third mayor since Barry, and they're still trying to recover. At least they're picking fairly decent mayors now.