Mayor Ramrod doesn’t want public input

Guest Post by Bruce Danielson

During the December 5, 2017, Public Input I noticed several Council members not paying attention to us. During my turn at the podium, I politely called out members of the dais for ignoring us while we talked. I won’t name names but as I stood there talking, I mentioned what each of them were doing. The cellphones went down, pens were dropped, papers put away and eyes were brought up to meet mine. I have a photo (and video) of the mayor being handed a cellphone from the Council leadership side during this time. Very inconsiderate to say the least.

As we talk during any public testimony, we see the contempt several of the members show while we are there. Several do not want to see us, much less hear us, as their minds are closed to whatever we say because it is already a done deal. One member said in the past, the mind is made up over the weekend prior to second reading when the exhibits with agenda are available.

Some of the members have been privy to a lot of the information, some have not been privy to any of the backroom information. Some members and the public have not been privy to any of the real information.

This is now a project $22 million project we have to pay for. It is not the 3 year old, $9 million project we first were told about. This is a $22 million project we heard about 3 weeks ago without any open discussion with the public. We have been only shown pretty pictures and a fancy video to go with a 117 page contract.

This has been a secret project many times postponed to make the public bonding pieces fit with a developer who continues to skirt every rule of law.

A few months back I found out and then announced to the City Council during a Public Input, how Community Development had screwed up details and they had to postpone the project.

The mayor shouted me down during a November Public Input because he did not want any reference to Legacy Development brought up when in fact I was not talking about Legacy only using a word “legacy” in a reference.

He is a bit touchy. It makes me think of Shakespeare when the question is asked “The lady doth protest too much, methinks.” What part of the issue is so uncomfortable he has to put up his guard?