By one vote, the borough assembly failed to override Mayor Carey’s veto of the ordinance that would have given borough middle-level management an appeals process when they felt they were fired for unfair reasons. Mili Martin and Gary Knopp originally had supported this ordinance, but decided not to overturn the veto. Ms. Martin did have strong words for Mayor Dave and warned him to address concerns of his mistreatment of long-term borough employees before the August assembly meeting or she would re-introduce the ordinance. Apparently there are 9 disgruntled former employees.
Earlier in the meeting, several members of ACT pleaded with the assembly to prevent the ordinance to move to a borough manager system from being presented to the voters. Before they were against this, ACT was a big proponent of a borough manager system. Members of ACT seemed completely oblivious to their flip-flops, but any borough resident with some memory cells intact can recall other times when ACT was for something before the were against it - like taking issues directly to the voters.
Several ACT members also spoke against establishing a recreational area service board, in this case to look into a new multi-sport complex, and asked that their districts be exempt if that district voted against the establishment of one. Ms Martin pointed out that that several assembly members, who were overwhelmingly re-elected by their districts and whose districts voted against term limits, were bound by the term limit ordinance passed by the ACT initiative.
ACT wants rules to be arbitrary – let the voters decide, unless it is about something that ACT doesn’t like, change the rules, unless ACT changes its mind, and that ordinances should be applied borough-wide, unless the ordinance is something that ACT doesn’t like.
And this group makes Mayor Dave dance. They show up in force at assembly meetings. They visit the mayor in his office. They rant on Sound-Off. They write to the PC.
Souldotna has no issues with fiscal conservatives - who can be in favor of waste? But ACT is being played by Mayor Dave as much as they are gaming the mayor and residents of the peninsula. Dave postures and pretends to cut the budget and becomes ACT's champion. ACT then protects the mayor as he practices cronyism - putting his political friends in borough positions that some are unqualified to fill. Dave then increases his own staff's budget and not one member of ACT cries foul.
Kudos to assembly members Long, Sprague, Superman, Smith and Smalley for understanding that having integrity means to be consistantly fair and honest.
The War On Tomatoes
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*The war on drugs is a joke. We spend $40 billion a year, and the proof
that it's a failure is that any kid can get almost any drug they want in
any c...
3 weeks ago
2 comments:
As I posted earlier... I listened to about as much of the meeting last night as I could stand.
The ACT folks made my head hurt.
Frankly, I expected the Assembly to overturn the veto, and was surprised they didn't.
Interesting times.
ACT has no idea, and I doubt they actually care, what the people of this borough want. The Assembly is doing the right thing in not letting ACT push them a specific direction.
As noted in a letter to the Peninsula Clarion from Assembly President Milli Martin on July 10, two of ACT's mouthpieces have outright lied about actions of the Assembly related to the term limit issue.
ACT has fomented this non-issue into a signature gathering project to prohibit the Assembly from acting per statutre to alter actions of a proposition after two years.
ACTs McBride "sees a double standard". Reasonable folks see a legal statute providing local government an alternative to minimize damage caused by corn roasting wannabe anarchists.
Rather than spin their wheels with local propositions that can be changed every two years, maybe the mayor's army should work on changing state statutes related to assessments of homes (their tax cap mission), term limits and all the other wonderful nonsense they clog our local systems with.
Put issues on the ballot and let "the people" decide their fate or trust the Assembly to make decisions as they were elected to do.
Let us decide whether we want a manager or a mayor, a sports dome or not, term limits or not.
ACT should focus more on what their yes-man mayor is doing to the borough financially.
They should step up and speak against the tens of thousands in raises he budgeted for his staff, the loss of experienced folks for cronies (these folks are gone becasue of uninformed descisions by the mayor and staff, not due to incompetence as he would like you to beleive), and ask him for substance rather than sound bytes on issues (please, can anyone describe what he has actually accomplished since October?).
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