A happier post script

To yesterday's rant

Following my flurry of angry emails to whomever I thought might listen, a few things happened.

Photo by RoonZ nl on Unsplash

Yolanda, who has previously been incredibly responsive, called me. Yolanda is the Community Development Director and as far as I can see has magical powers (we’ll get to that later). She left a message and called back a few minutes later. It was 8pm, but she wanted to reach me before day’s end. She gave me both her personal cell number and her reassurance that she would personally handle the corrections process moving forward.

She explained that as soon as the corrections list was ready, she would send it to us personally. And when Team Phelan is ready to resubmit, she will meet us at Malibu City Hall and handle things in person. This is rather than submitting via a portal—which is typically how it’s done.

I also heard from a wonderful city council member named Haylynn Conrad. Haylynn wrote a lovely note to me last time I had escalate things to the mayor’s office. And her note yesterday again contained compassion, promises of action, as well as appreciation for letting her know the situation. I appreciated all of it.

But what of Yolanda’s sorcery?

Today, at 5.56pm, Yolanda sent an email with a six document attachment containing all of the “Submittal 1 Deliverables”. The corrections that are meant to take 10 days (and that’s if things are sped up!).

In one day!

Hallelujah!

Lauren was amazed. We were amazed.

Does the sliver of me that is cynical wish things didn’t need to happen this way?

Of course.

Am I happy about this outcome?

Yes. Of course!

I shan’t even begin to pretend I understand any of the comments. One of the documents is 19 pages full of things like this:

Luckily, we can leave all of that to the rho factor experts.