Wherein Squid ponders the casino connections of Seaside's new city manager.

All In…Aside from the holidays and the occasional trip to the Sierra, Squid’s not a much of a winter cephalopod. Squid prefers days long and the air warm.

But there are a few things Squid does enjoy about this time of year, and one is that Squid is more prone to curling up on the couch and digging in to one of the many books lying around Squid’s lair.

Even still, year after year, many of those books continue to collect dust on Squid’s shelves, including one titled Wisdom, a coffee table book filled with famous people imparting the lessons they’ve learned in life. (It has Clint Eastwood on the cover, pre- “talk to the chair” Clint.)

One reason that book has never much appealed to Squid is that Squid believes wisdom must be earned, and can’t be gleaned during trips to the bathroom. See, there are lot of wise things Squid’s read over the years, again and again, and they still don’t seem to sink in and make life easier.  

Among those things is that “patience is a virtue,” which Squid has read and heard countless times to zero effect. This comes to mind because Squid has been waiting impatiently for months to find out who Seaside would hire to replace longtime City Manager John Dunn, who’s retiring at the end of the year.

It was a competitive process, Squid is told, that included about 50 applicants. But on Nov. 20, the city finally announced it had found its man: Craig Malin, of Davenport, Iowa.

Okay, Squid thought, the city reached far and wide, which is a good thing.

Then Squid googled Malin, and the questions started piling up.

Malin was city administrator in Davenport, which has a population of just over 100,000, for more than a decade. Everything appeared to have gone well until the end, when Davenport residents, and the mayor, called for his resignation.

“I will never resign,” Malin reportedly said, so the city council voted 9-1 to put him out of the job.

The controversy leading to his departure stemmed from a single line in a development agreement with—wait, huh?—a casino!

That’s right folks, among the qualifications Malin will bring to Seaside is experience in negotiating with developers of gambling operations. (Squid can practically hear Monterey Downs developer Brian Boudreau chortling with delight.)

Malin got run out of town because a line item in an agreement he reportedly negotiated behind the backs of city council, who later approved it—appears to have left Davenport taxpayers on the hook for about $2 million in grading costs to build the casino.

All along, Malin maintained his innocence, and that if the city was on the hook for two mil, it was the city attorney’s fault, not his.

“I regret the city’s legal department may have been outlawyered again,” Malin was quoted as saying by a local news source in wake of the scandal.

Squid also happened upon a wistful blog post Malin wrote a few days ago, in which he waxes philosophical about leaving his “beloved Davenport” for Seaside, and what the tradeoffs were in the move:

“Pacific Ocean for Mississippi River. Monterey cypress for burr oak. In and Out for Culvers.  Laguna Seca for Modern Woodmen Park. Mid Century Modern for Richardsonian Romanesque.”

Wait, by “Mid Century Modern,” is Malin referring to the Embassy Suites?

Malin also writes that he was sure not be seen leaving his Davenport office carrying off all his things, so as not to give the media any material.

“The media steals enough of your soul on a daily basis that the prospect of them with a picture of me carrying a box of desk-top personal items had me cleaning my office after the 10:00 news was well over,” he writes.

Oh Craig, Squid does so look forward to meeting you, and should rightfully hold off on passing judgment until you’re on the job.

After all, in the words of Irish politician Garret FitzGerald, who’s quoted in Squid’s book of Wisdom: “Above all, avoid cynicism.”

That’s difficult, however, given that the city paid Malin $310,000 to get him to resign, and in the words of Davenport resident Dave Murphey, “People really want you gone when they are willing to pay you nearly a third of a million dollars to just disappear.”

Squid would love not to be cynical about it all, but Squid’s just not wise enough.