Continuing On.....

The outcry over the way the "Special Meeting" was held yesterday continues.

The complaints can be generally sorted in three categories: (1) How dare the City Council approve these raises!", (2) "How dare the City Council ignore the spoken will of the citizens!", and (3) "How dare the City Council schedule a meeting so early!". All of these end with the statement: "I'll never vote for them again!".

Let's take these one by one.

(1) This is mainly political blather (a nice way of saying "male bovine excrement") on the part of politico's who lost last September. They don't want the ordinary taxpayers to know that most of these members used to be their allies. In fact, most of these so-called "outraged ordinary taxpayers" are either City employees who got their jobs because they (or someone related to them) were Friends and supporters of the Mayor...or are just political allies of the Tearful One.

It is (conveniently) forgotten that this is the SAME City Council that voted them huge pay raises...few objected when that happened a few months ago!

(2) Sadly, the "Public Forum" part of these meetings has devolved into a venting session for those who mainly want to hear themselves talk. It's actually no different now than are similar sessions in the State Legislature, Congress, or the Supreme Court. The time to make yourself really heard by your councilman is before this point: write, email or phone them.

(3) This meeting was originally scheduled for 7:00 pm...until the Mayor decided to toss a hand grenade into the process. He scheduled a second meeting for 5:15 pm: to force the Council's hand on his appointments to various commissions and boards. While he has that right to convene a special session, I wonder if there wasn't a little one-upmanship going on here: neither side would compromise on the timing (say, like, 6:00 pm?), so the Council chose to start at the earliest legal time of 5 pm, so that there weren't a bunch of conflicting reports of when the meeting would be held. Both sides must shoulder the blame as far as that mess is concerned.

Finally, for all of you who vow never to vote for them again, GOOD NEWS! Most of these guys lost already; you don't need to worry about who to vote against.