Citizens - Please Shut Up!

        by Ron West

            The message of the majority of the council was made clear in the pre-council meeting¹ on May 23rd!  It is simply a restatement of their prior position that they do not want to hear from anyone who disagrees with them on anything. 

            In the meeting, the Mayor suggested new rules that would move the Citizen presentation portion of council meetings to the end of the council meeting and would turn off the televising of that portion of the meeting.  His plan was to discourage the presentations in the first place and then to record them without live television so that the council and the staff could prepare rebuttals for all the "lies" and "falsehoods" they were hearing from the citizens.  (Please note that the Mayor's lies like his recent statement in a letter to the Star Telegram regarding the required vacating of the Library due to Highway 820 expansion are not the lies he claims are the problem.  Also please note that there has not been any specific identification of any lies with specific written responses from anyone in city government.)

        One of the lies referenced by the Mayor related to the following notice that was published on NRHOnline recently regarding the proposed revisions to the Agricultural Zoning in our city.  While I am not sure what the "lie" is supposed to be in the notice, he must not have wanted any public attention focused on the P&Z meeting that is to discuss it. 

Important Notice:     NRH Planning and Zoning to discuss AG - Agricultural Zoning Changes on June 2nd - Check the Agenda to be posted on the city website for more information!  Without your input this might become another RV type of demand from local government.  - Posted 5/18/05

        Thanks to the efforts of Jo Cox, it appears that at least a majority of the council will support the continued televising of the citizen presentations live but will retain the "replay" for the next council meeting as part of the rebuttal.  This is a reverting back to the old system that Tim Welch was successful in changing two years ago.  He appears to now be supporting this suppression of input.  Part of the change suggested by John Lewis is to change the time allowed back to the 3 minutes that it used to be when the move is made to the end of the council sessions.  Trevino then suggested that total time be moved to 3o minutes from the present 20 minutes allowing up to 10 citizens to present.  (During the campaign, Trevino allowed 40 minutes for campaigning during the citizen presentation portion of the council meeting knowing that 4 ten minute presentations were going to support the incumbents.)

       The council is also developing "censure" rules to deal with comments they don't like primarily from Nancy Bielik.  He specifically cites a "lie" he identifies as Bielik talking about "oil" drilling on city property.  While Bielik did mention "oil and gas" drilling on city property, Trevino's attack is simply to divert attention from the total truth of Bielik's statement regarding gas drilling on city property.  The council did not discuss oil drilling, they only discussed gas drilling.   With all the misinformation coming from the leadership of our city, you really have to keep your eye on the ball to see what is really happening.

        Other comments in the pre-council session regarding the limiting of citizen input related to "lies" being reported about the city budget.  This was apparently in regards to the still unanswered requests for full accounting of the huge slush funds identified as the General Fund Non-Departmental Budget and the Utility Fund Non-Departmental Budget.  These two budget pages contain planned spending for over 20% of all property tax revenues that will be collected for our city for this year.  Over $3,766,000 is specifically earmarked for "sundries".  While we have made a number of requests for full explanations of these numbers, the city has not provided the full accounting requested nor have they explained the movement of moneys out of these accounts.  Please remember that there are no records of questions raised by any council person on these two huge budget items.

        Questions raised in a prior article published on LNO remain unanswered.  Specific follow up questions have been totally ignored.  The majority of the council seems to be defending something that they do not want to discuss publicly.  If there are "lies" as the Mayor states, then why not publish factual information for all to see.  As a last resort, we will be filing an Open Records Requests for all records related to these departments for the current and prior two years.  This should not be necessary but given the continuing attacks on the open questions, there may be expenditures that they do not want us to see. 

        Finally, in council, the Council rewarded City Manager Cunningham by giving him a 9% raise (much higher than other city employees) and extending his contract.  Since the discussion of his performance was held in closed session, one might assume that he is being rewarded for excluding citizens from participation in our local government.  He does deserve credit for the very cryptic agendas that give very little information to the public for all open meetings in the city. 

        The rules will be an agenda item for the next council meeting so if you have anything you want to say to your council, you need to put it in writing and send it.  Remember, when an item is on the agenda, it is not up for comment or discussion from citizens.  This council really doesn't want you to bother them unless you are supporting their efforts at determining what is best for you.  If you do decide to offer comments that they won't like, be prepared for an onslaught of baseless and misleading attack information being released by the majority of the council and by city staff under the direction of Cunningham.

¹    The portion of the pre-council meeting relating to the above article was recorded on video tape by Ron West.