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.