While pondering on the recent resignation of Glen Kuntz from the City Council I had the following thoughts.
Glen always fought for what he wanted and he always tried to do what was best for the city. Sometimes what was best was that little edge to his voice when he thought the other Councilmembers were spending too much time talking and not enough time acting. He fought for his pet projects (senior center etc) with all he had.
He was the father figure on the Council. He let the other Councilmembers play and goof around until he saw that time was wasting. He would then step in and get things on track again. We was not a man you wanted on your bad side.
For all the good times, I say thank you Glen and good luck on life's new adventures.
I agree. Thank you, Glenn for all your work for the city. I personally benefited from you holding Broadstripe's feet to the fire. While the internet speeds might not be better, at least they take the complaint calls now.
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My thanks to Glenn as well. I'd welcome the opportunity to learn more about the reasons why, and any insights he might have into recent events such as the scheduling of retreats when the fewest people can attend.
ReplyDeleteBart, citizens have only very rarely attended council retreats, even when they were held on Saturdays. One citizen did attend the recent one and I recall the same citizen attending two years ago. Hope this puts things in perspective for you.
ReplyDeleteSince we are adding perspective, I will add mine as well. The citizen they are referring to is Skylar Hansen, who was able to attend, in large part, because he is unemployed and his days are free to attend day long meetings on fridays.
ReplyDeletePerhaps another contributing factor is last years retreat was heavily covered by the River Current News (a reporter and the editor were there). You will remember that Councilmember Walkers infamous sustainability plan was presented there. With the retreat held on a Friday the press was not able to attend because they actually have jobs and were busy contributing to the economic recovery.
Just a little perspective.
I don't understand anonymous' point above. Is he saying that since only one citizen has attended in the past, that means citizens should be prevented from attending in the future? Seems like a bad decision to me.
ReplyDeleteBy the way, I really apprecited the River Current's coverage of last year's retreat. And I was one of the citizens who started attending council meetings to learn more about sustainable development because of it.
Thisbrings up a good point. The government should be focused on being as open as possible and as accomodating to the public's right to information as possible.
ReplyDeleteIt is bad precident for the Council to decide to hold their meetings at a less convienient time because they had a poor showing at the last retreat.
This is a bad road to start down.
It might also be good to point out that if numbers are the only factor, last years retreat had twice as many citizen attendees than this years. Last years was held on Saturday this years was held on Friday.
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