Published: Friday, September 6, 2002 Time for a fresh start   By Tom Hennessy Staff columnist The Long Beach City Council's Wednesday vote to dismiss the city manager was as courageous as it was overdue. The members are to be commended. There is no pleasure to be derived in this sort of thing, as I have found myself. Henry Taboada, from what I am told, is a proud man. And perhaps that pride prevented the matter from being resolved in a more congenial fashion than a unanimous vote to fire him. He was given an offer that would have allowed him to retire at year's end. The council chambers saw an impressive turnout of people in support of Taboada. But many of those included city employees, some of whom have done well by the city manager and whose continued prospects of doing well were hitched solidly to his star. Selective view Case in point: Assistant City Manager Gerald R. Miller. In a letter to the P-T, published the morning of Taboada's dismissal, Miller took issue with my week-old column saying the city manager should go. He said the column, which he called an "attack," was "wrong." Respectfully, I suggest Miller is wrong. Part of that column was a long list of some of Taboada's questionable actions, as culled from back issues of the P-T. But Miller seems to suggest that those things were positive achievements, municipal victories, if you will. Never mind the fact that they had little and in some cases no support from citizens. Miller's comments reflect, to me at least, a City Hall flavor these days that is characteristic of George Orwell's "1984," in which any commentary at variance with the government's is simply dispatched down the "memory hole." City halls can have a way of breeding arrogance. Having spent five years in one (as press secretary to the mayor of Pittsburgh), I saw numerous officials turn self-protective and lose sight of their obligations to citizens. Mr. Fix-it? Since writing the column on Taboada, I have received more phone calls, letters and emails than in any week in 22 years of writing this column. Many were from people asking me to correct all manner of alleged ills in city government, even in Washington, D.C. One reader requested, in all seriousness, that I stop the nation from going to war against Iraq. If only it were that easy. Perhaps this is a good time to define this column. It is not, by any stretch, a "City Hall" column. Nor has it ever been my intention to be the town scold. I will continue to write on a variety of subjects. And they will include city government. But I believe criticism of local government is more effective when it is selective and spaced out over a period of time. The bottom line of the Taboada matter is that it could be the dawning of a new era, a time of reconciliation between City Hall and the people it serves - or is supposed to serve. One of my favorite Long Beach activists, Bry Myown, has had a wonderful reflection: "I can well understand that everyone inside City Hall is apprehensive about what might happen next, and I hope everyone inside City Hall can appreciate that the public is always apprehensive about what might happen next." She sees the present situation as an "opportunity to start fresh." So do I. And so, we should hope, does the City Council. Tom Hennessy's viewpoint appears Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. He can be reached at (562) 499-1270, or via e-mail at Scribe17@aol.com