I got the impression they were a group of people that broadly understood their problems and were finding it very difficult to steer the city towards good solutions.
Although Mr. Johnson was the City's Director of IT, realistically he had very nominal oversight over many of the city's actual IT departments - which were spread across a series of departments with their own employees, budgets, and resources. This was something he had been actively trying to improve but with limited progress.
I don't know what the best solution is - their hiring process is flawed and it's difficult to remove or replace problem employees. The budget is about 60% of what it probably needs to be and there's no path towards improving it.
Knowing exactly how to fix a problem, having the skills to do so, and being absolutely forbidden from actually doing it.
This sounds like one of those "opportunities".
All that said, laments about "how do we fix government X" will never be solved if we deem the cost of entry too high to even attempt to fix it ourselves. Obviously this is all in addition to and outside of any democratic process that would lead to reform of how these positions were managed, performed, etc.
It's actually not something that would be my first choice, but I do personally know people who have been harmed by incompetent/apathetic IT leadership in local governments. It angers me enough that I would consider a career change.