A Reader Writes In About The City Council Meeting

Hi, Joe,

Someone on your blog asked what happened at Monday night's council meeting. I saw you in public comment talking about the wrist slap those two SU students got for all the mayhem they caused in that neighborhood. That's a real shame. And about the prostitution going on near downtown. You did a good job, including that pat on the back to SPD.

Since you spoke at the meeting, I was surprised you didn't have any comment on it. Were you there for the whole thing? If not, I figured I'd give you mine, even though it was a really tame meeting. There weren't many items to discuss. Even some special presentation got pulled. The mayor did drink tap water for us. She gave certificates to water department people for Salisbury winning some tap water taste contest in the state. I don't think the taste is so special, but it was nice to see the "little people" get a little credit.

The night was so tame that even three public hearings had no one speak on the "who cares" topics. The only real exchange came over the gas contract for the WWTP. Mrs. Campbell asked some smart questions (as usual), and Mrs. Cohen offered an amendment to make something clear.

What made this kind of interesting was, #1, the lady attorney agreed with Mrs. Cohen and they had a bit of a laugh together. (Hint: Paul Wilber can stay home and let that lady be legal counsel!) Second, even though both Mrs. Cohen and Mrs. Campbell were brief in their comments (not even 5 minutes) because there really wasn't much to talk about, good ol' Louise Smith couldn't resist jumping in on Mrs. Cohen to tell her she was using up her second set of minutes to make her amendment.

Well, I learned something when Mrs. Cohen politely set Louise Smith straight that an amendment was a "debatable motion" and she would speak briefly to the MAIN "debatable motion" when they got back to it. In other words, Louise Smith was breaking her own rule already! Then Louise Smith couldn't even (again) keep what they were voting on straight!

If I didn't know better, I'd say Louise Smith purposely put together an itty-bitty meeting so it would look like her 5-minute rule was saving us all from the dreaded tedium of democracy .

And that's the point some firebrand of a lady (Last name Lloyd? She's been on once before.) made in public comment. Joe, that woman said everything so many of us are thinking. She called the three council members on the carpet for their lack of integrity in meeting without Mrs. Campbell and Mrs. Cohen, on using anonymous calls to justify eliminating anonymous letters, and more. I kid you not! That lady nailed it! Damn, she's got guts!

The other public comments were good, too. The little Trader fellow was there with his usual reminders of things they are letting go for years. S.J. Disharoon (I remembered his name this time because Bob Caldwell just got up and said "Amen to what S.J. Disharoon said!) went down a long list of stupid ways the city spends our tax money. The public comments were really the meat of the night.

Sorry to go past my 5 minutes. Probably took me longer to write this than it took the meeting to run, LOL. But people ought to catch the replay on PAC14. I think they run Wednesday mornings. I know they often run the following Monday at 6 p.m. because I've had to catch a few on replay. I want to know if anyone else felt like I did that this was made intentionally short in an effort to make Louise Smith look good. Instead, she couldn't even run a short meeting well.

If you print any of this, please don't use my name. I'm not as brave as that one lady. Just sign me:

"M."