At the recent annual reorganizational meeting of the city council, the mayor again stumbled, and publicly fought off her conscience. In announcing her city council member appointments to the two major committees, and various other citizens committees, she announced that she decided to trash a proven practice of polling the ten members of the council, and she simply picked the ones she wanted to place them on.
Needless to say, that hit a brick wall! For as long as I can remember, as far back as Mayor Hardacre when she was first elected mayor in 1978, the mayor offered the courtesy of allowing council members a chance to prioritize the appointments they were interested in, with a note that every effort would be made to accommodate the wishes.
Not this mayor! She changed the whole process, because she said, she could. And she made a point of mentioned a dozen times that she didn’t need to explain her actions, but followed that up with several attempts to explain herself.
Now I have always felt that a mayor, in the leadership role, shouldn’t need to make excuses for actions they feel they need to make. BUT, when it is obvious that the action they make is wrong, which was clearly pointed out by several members of the disgruntled council members, a strong personality trait would be to maybe change their mind. And admit they were wrong.
That didn’t happen here. She did in and stuck with her plan.
Now she has a council split more than it already was, and he will need to suffer the consequences, It will be a heavy crutch in any attempts to get the council to go along with any future plans she has to maybe move the city forward.