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Tuesday, November 20, 2007

KEEPING UP APPEARANCES




You folks sure missed an Oscar-worthy performance tonight at the city council work session by none other than Ms. Accountability, Louise Smith.

Her entourage entered a few minutes before the meeting should have ended just to catch the grand performance. (Hell, they didn't know what was on the agenda, just ask Ron Alessi. And THIS wasn't even on the agenda!)

Poor Louise. The meeting ran past her alloted time (again), leaving her groupies to warm their seats longer than planned. You see, those nasty council members just took too long discussing stupid things like annexation problems and about $3 million dollars for a stormwater project that's been sitting in the hopper, what, about 2 years? Bubba alone took up all the council's portion of the first agenda item's whopping 15 minutes about an annexation without a plan.

But finally, the curtain went up and Louweasel talked about council members' behavior at meetings. How UNITY is what the voters want! How members should adhere to the rules! That council time was not to be spent on philosophizing, monopolizing or grandstanding! And no questions, I mean, attacks on staff.

Louweasel chided council members for not performing their ceremonial duties. She scolded them about their committee assignments. And then she adjourned the meeting because there wasn't any more business, even though you could read the faces of two council members that oh, yes, there was.

First, isn't it a tiny bit hypocritical to pull a grandstanding, philosophizing, monopolizing speech on grandstanding, philosophizing and monopolizing for the entire "general discussion" portion of the agenda, for an audience that arrived just to hear their master's voice, then close the meeting down so nobody else but the city administrator got to speak?

And what is with this "do your ceremonial duties"? Where the hell in the Salisbury Charter or any other city document are the council members directed to perform ceremonial duties?

Hey, Louise, how about performing your FIDUCIARY duties, woman! You know, all that ACCOUNTABILITY stuff you GRANDSTANDED about during your campaign? Have you noticed the audit is LATE AGAIN?

Oh, but that's not what's important. Ceremonies and short meetings and shows of unity -- that's what Salisbury citizens want. NOT!

Let's face it, folks. It's all about "Keeping Up Appearances" with Louise. Did she care that the Cindy MacDonald from Paul Wilber's office was trying to generate some more billing for their firm by calling for study after study to put a leash on adult shops until Terry Cohen pointed out that the documents Cindy and Paul provided quoted the Supreme Court about it being okay to use other cities' studies, thereby making this a faster solution to get to?

Or how about after Debbie Campbell suggested and the other three members and annexation guru Chris Jakubiak agreed that a full day's session on the annexation agreements would be a good idea to move on. Did Louweasel want to spend the time? No, in repeating the consensus, she said "full day or HALF day," single-handedly trying to change what everyone else was good with.

After all, folks, we can't have REAL council duties interfering with our ceremonial duties!

This is what goes on with a holiday week work session, folks. Let's do it when none of the citizens can pay attention. Let's abuse our presidency and the rules and invent new ones while we spank other members about rules. Let's call anything we don't want to hear "grandstanding" and grandstand about it. Let's shorten the meetings and cut off real discussion so we can grandstand and then adjourn the meeting.

This woman is out of control, Salisbury! Wake up and get doing something about it. It was one of the most ridiculous and un-American things I've witnessed in a long time.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Joe:

That's a great shot of Cathcart (is she trying to look like Barrie these days-?) and her pals.

Keep 'em coming.

Anonymous said...

What lousy photoshop work you do -- that's Barrie, not Cathcart.

dan said...

Wow. With this and the other post, you can really tell of all the evils in this world, a blog by Joe Albero is the absolute worst thing happening in our community. When is the next election?

:)

She has no right to speak for what the people want, since what they wanted when they voted for her was the complete opposite of what she has provided.

At least the Daily Times is keep us all informed of this. Oh, wait.....

Anonymous said...

Dan, amen a thousand times. Louweasel hasn't stood up for a single thing she campaigned on.

Had her campaign reflected what she REALLY stood for:
Hi, I'm Louise Smith, the mayor's tool. I don't care about your money. I just care about having an important position and will do anything the mayor says once I'm in it.

Then the doors would have slammed in her face and she wouldn't have made it through the primary.

Bob said...

Dude.....it looks like Ron is picking his a$$ in that last picture. You've GOT to be able to do something with that one. LOL

Anonymous said...

This rerun from a prior post:
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Anonymous said...
Lynn Cathcart is like venereal disease, she just won't go awayeven though nobody wants her .Why won't she just do what she said she was going to do and leave local politics to be a granny.

8:05 PM

BULLS-EYE!

Anonymous said...

Judging from the kissy-face picture, Bubba's hongry for Lynn.

I think I'm going to hurl chunks.

Anonymous said...

No wonder they market this area as Grey Shores. Good lord fellows, ever hear of Grecian Formula? Try it, you'll like it. Donnie Williams is really aging and not so gracefully either.