I noticed this week the city council was holding a city council meeting the 5th Tuesday of the month which is odd. By charter they are only required to have 3 meetings a month but usually have 4, they skipped last week. I asked a city councilor why this ‘Phantom’ meeting has appeared without an agenda and they told me ‘We don’t have a meeting next week.’ So Mr. City Clerk, how do these things just appear out of nowhere?
While Councilor Soehl has done very little in his two terms, besides brow beating public inputers like a unruly child, he did surprise his fellow councilors today with his passionate defense of gigantic trucks that only belong in gravel pits with the governor’s dead dogs.
A new councilor, not Lucy the cement bucket lady, but Jennifer Sigette has proposed an ordinance that previous chickensh!t councils and parking department gurus wouldn’t pull the trigger on; if you have a gigantic truck, don’t park it on these four blocks on Phillips Avenue.
Pretty simple, but Curtis the Blurtist wasn’t having it!
“What if a bunch of my podunk relatives who only drive gigantic farm trucks from Woonsocket came downtown to shop at all the luxury boutiques, buy rare antiques at Zandbroz, have a steak meal at Crawfords or Minervas right before taking in the Symphony at the Pavilion after getting this ticket, they may never come back.”
First off, he didn’t say most of that, but he might as well had. He gave some bullsh!t anecdedote about some farmer visiting from a small town. Yeah, so many boot scraping visitors downtown these days I am surprised it doesn’t smell like cow manure . . . nope, just dead hogs. As someone who has lived and worked in DTSF for over 30 years, the only time you observe ‘Farm Folks’ downtown is when all six of them are trying to read a parking meter and after 10 minutes of frustration get back in their sheep hauler and drive away never to experience some overpriced app at Parker’s.
Besides the safety reasons for passing this ordinance, it is just plain RUDE. So you have a big truck. Good for you. I don’t need one, I drink a couple of Arnold Palmers each day, it seems to cure my fascination with large shiny things.
Just remember to NOT bring your five gallon pails full of cement . . . BAD NEIGHBOR!
Look at at this change to policies, (page 13) they are trying to find cover from their Constitutional duties;
Robert’s is a guideline on how to run a meeting, but those RULES do not supersede the 1st Amendment or US Constitution. Like I told the council last Tuesday (FF: 1:10) these are consideration rules that the public AND the council should use as a guideline to the meetings, but when it comes to PUBLIC INPUT anything besides violent threats is allowable and limiting speakers is blatant censorship and little else.
Instead of spending so much time trying to silence the public, why don’t you talk to us? The only time I see councilors is at Carnegie, makes you wonder if some of them are playing Marshall Selberg Musical Districts on us? Speaking of that crooked fella, still wondering why all the councilors and mayor shirked their responsibility of managing their own? Selberg should have been booted from the council and he should have been charged, but not these guys, circle the f’ing wagons.
UPDATE: I contacted a current city councilor about this and they said they were unsure what was going on. A former city official told me this title change is NOT going towards the new budget analyst but the CURRENT council chief of Staff, Jim David. But what is confusing is that Mr. David would also be the direct supervisor of the clerk staff which is odd since the city clerk is really the defacto COS of council because of charter language. So why is Mr. David getting the new position and NOT the city clerk? That answer I cannot give you.
Most organizations would have changed the title before advertising the position, but that is NOT how the city council does things. Half-Backwards. The Budget Analyst/legislative advisor was retiring so the city council was tasked with replacing that person (a position that I thought the city really didn’t need because I was unaware of any policy he helped work on or crafted over the years). We also PAY the municipal league to lobby the legislature on our behalf, so having an internal legislative person seems like duplicity.
So I guess the city council just waited for this person to retire before admitting that the position was obsolete;
So why didn’t they just advertise the position that way? Oh, that’s right, because if you look under the pay grade, you will see they get quite the bump. Not bad, getting a raise a week after you are hired, she must be an over achiever. I wonder if the pay bump will be discussed in the meeting. Doubtful.
While I agree the council staff should have some kind of a supervisor, they already do, the city clerk. So why isn’t he the supervisor for the city council staff? I don’t think the council staff needs a direct supervisor but someone who they can go to with day to day HR stuff but the council chairs really should be the direct supervisors.
It’s funny how the new council is taking on all this new staff and I don’t think it was their idea, I think that the council chairs, Soehl and Merkouris have been cooking up these staff additions for awhile so that when stuff goes south on the council they can blame staff, oldest political trick in the book.
l3wis