Let’s just say for now, I am done talking about the indoor pool. To tell you the truth, I was never to concerned about the pool itself as I was about the process. I think the process was handled horribly, before the election and right up until the council vote to approve the facility, and that’s what I want to talk about.
This wasn’t the first time that certain councilors and the mayor have bullied other councilors at meetings. It doesn’t matter what the agenda item or topic is, I feel that there should be a thorough discussion on EVERY agenda item. Let’s face it, the council makes some pretty important decisions about our money, they should do their jobs as our city’s legislature and study each expenditure very carefully.
What does this mean? It means that sometimes a lot of questions need to be asked, and that means there are NO time limits on this questioning. I have never found anywhere in the city charter that says the council has to finish their meetings at a certain time. They are certainly entitled to a recess if they are running long, or they can also defer agenda items to a later meeting, but this current trend of limiting public testimony and even limiting questions a councilor can ask has to end (I think the longest council meeting I watched was over 4 hours long).
Let’s take Tuesday night’s meeting as an example. It wasn’t the first time the Mayor cut off councilor Staggers and called a vote, it was even worse because councilor Rolfing leaned over to Kermit’s direction and said, “You have talked enough.†And as Staggers was trying to talk and being bullied by the mayor, the city clerk, DeniseTucker continued the roll call vote before anything was resolved between the mayor and Staggers.
First off, Denise fails to know who she works for, she is council staff, not the mayor’s. She should have suspended the roll call until Huether and Staggers resolved the testimony issue. Secondly, the meetings are called ‘City Council meetings’, not ‘The Mayor’s city meeting’. These meetings are legislative sessions for the council. The mayor is a part of that body, but he is only there to break ties. Besides being obviously rude and disrespectful to his fellow elected officials, the mayor is negligent in allowing the council to perform their respective duties when he bullies and censors them.
The irony of all this is that the council will spend hours each year scolding and publicly embarrassing business owners over failing alcohol compliance stings (something that doesn’t affect the city budget that much, and is mandated by the State) but when they are spending almost $20 million of our tax dollars, suddenly there must be a limit on the time it can be discussed.
Does councilor Staggers carry on sometime? Sure. Is he repetitive in his questioning? Sometimes. But I didn’t feel he had did either of these things Tuesday night. This was an important vote, it needed to be vetted fully. If I were in his shoes Tuesday night, I would have walked out on the vote, and not came back to the meeting until the mayor gave him a public apology. I was also disappointed in the council for allowing the mayor do this to him. Not one single councilor defended him.
I think there is no hope for the mayor. He is used to being the school yard bully at his previous job so he continues to do it as mayor. The NEW council needs to seriously look at changing the city charter/ordinance so that the mayor is not running these meetings anymore. He can sit in the audience in case he needs to break a tie or testify to a specific item, but he shouldn’t be running these meetings like a dictator.
Am I happy we are building an indoor public pool. Not really, but the community wants it, so it was inevitable that it would get approved. But the process that was used by the mayor and some city directors and councilors was abhorrent and possibly against state election laws.
If I was an indoor pool supporter, I would be embarrassed of how this pool got approved. Very embarrassed.
