Politics in Paradise
Politics in Paradise has long been a long standing column that appears in the monthly Civic Chatline newsletter which provides comments and opinions on city and county elected officials and bureaucrats.
You now have the opportunity to post your own thoughts in this forum on these individuals as well. We hope you will take advantage of this area especially since these officials provide so much material to comment about.
Enjoy
posted by Civic at 5/23/2005 10:21:00 AM
3 Comments:
Monday’s city council meeting was another classic to watch as Richard Stevens’ wish to see the city have a true roundabout installed on Cultural Park Blvd. was shot down by the “backwards-ship” of Tim Day. This round-about has been in the works as a city project for over a year and was previously budgeted.
“What not” or is it “what knot”, Day pulled the roundabout from the consent agenda for a separate vote that went 6-2 against proceeding. This is another classic case of the city again wasting money for a study that had a positive recommendation from staff to proceed only to have a last minute council vote reverse a year’s worth of work.
During discussion Day said that Dick Stevens “has been putting him to sleep on council for four years.” You can all draw your own conclusions from Day’s own remarks however; we will say that once again Day shows his lack of respect for other council members.
Cape Coral will have a Home Depot. In the process we all learned a new technical term compliments of Mickey Rosado who was concerned about the “outgress” to the site. Poor Mickey hasn’t yet mastered ingress and egress terminology. We also heard from Mickey how he was excused to leave early from last week’s council meeting and that he “didn’t leave in a huff.” Hey Mickey what you say and what you did, as we all observed, are two different stories.
We are wondering when this mayor will start insisting upon having only one meeting taking place during city council proceedings? While we believe there has been a certain amount of decorum and a degree of civility displayed we also observe that there are simultaneous meetings taking place during the city council meetings. The primary offenders are Rosado and Day and the mayor has yet to put an end to this breach of procedure.
Civic applauds the efforts of Council member Bertolini for trying to amend Resolution 22-05 city employees travel policy on May 31. Her amendment would have required city council member’s use of city owned vehicles to first get the approval from city council prior their use of a city owned vehicles. Unfortunately her amendment failed on a 4-4 vote with Boyd, Day, Jeffers and Rosado voting against the amendment. Bertolini’s amendment would have established some policy direction on this issue where none currently exists.
A couple of interesting things happened during the discussion on the amendment. The mayor questioned Bertolini’s motivation for the amendment. That happens to be a no-no since motivations are not questionable in considering legislation.
The second thing that we observed is Tim Day’s continued thirst for spending by suggesting that the city now needs to find money in the budget to buy a vehicle expressly for council use. Where does it end?
The May 31 meeting was another example of the breach in meeting decorum under Mayor Feichthaler who continues to allow private discussions to take place between council members, primarily Day and Rosado during the discussions on issues. This obviously should not be allowed. Quite frankly it makes the Mayor look bad as well as being disrespectful to his chairing the meetings.
Bravo on a well written letter that appeared in the News-Press today. The only problem on Rosado is that unfortunately we didn't know of his lies until after the election.
Look at shortcomings:
Paul Asfour's faith in the judiciary is laudable but should be offset by the fact that, while a false swearing charge was thrown out, it remains that Councilman Jeffers signed a legal document without fully comprehending what that
document meant.
It may not have risen to the level of a misdemeanor, and there may well have been some political motivation behind the legal complaint and the subsequent investigation. I would not be surprised at any of that.
Mr. Asfour noted that questions remained about this incident, but I'm disappointed that none of the questions he posed in his letter to editor related to Mr. Jeffers' actions in the first place. The fact of the matter is that Mr. Jeffers signed a legal document of some consequence without, by his own admission. "fully understanding what it meant."
If Mr. Jeffers doesn't understand the meaning of the word "indigent," and the rest of the form on which it appeared, he would not be likely to understand the complexities of the legal documents that cross the desks of the city council members every day in this vast and rapidly growing city.
Councilman Rosado didn't understand what a college degree was, and Mr. Jeffers doesn't appear to know what indigent means. Both were elected to council despite their apparent and obvious shortcomings.
When the electorate complains about the council in the future, they would be well-advised to remember that these members of council were elected with their shortcomings visible for all to see but they, the electorate, chose not to see them. If you voted for them, you have only yourself to blame.
Spare me your letters of righteous indignation to the editor when your shortsighted vote turns into anger at your "once" candidate of choice.
ANTHONY E. CUNNINGHAM, Cape Coral
Post a Comment
<< Home