Guest Comment
One of our frequent commenters, LookingNorth, sent this by e-mail. I agree that it is worth making into a blog entry of its own.
- Frostbrand.
~~~
For our anonymous Longrie-ite:
Here’s the gist of it for me…I know you may find it hard to believe, but not all of us are anti-musketeer for the sake of being anti-musketeer. The three stooges brought all of this on themselves.
I can understand Hjelle’s comment about not getting elected to win a popularity contest. And, for me, it’s not about replacing or not replacing Fursman. It is also not about hiring or not hiring Mr. Brilliant. What it is about is process. It is about discourse. It is about ethics. With the three musketeers, there has been nothing in the way of process or discourse, much less ethics. I agree that they had a platform that they ran on. However, did the platform explicitly lay out that we were going to have nothing but scorched earth when the three of them rode thru town? Do you really think that they would’ve gotten elected if they had mentioned that they were going to pull the 2:00 am stunt? Yes, they would have received votes. But I am sure a significant portion of the voters, knowing what they know now, would certainly vote differently. I know I would!
I understand that Rossbach & Jeunemann could more often than not be voting in the minority on many issues. However, on most of these issues, at least the ones that truly mattered, there was never any substantive discussion, at least from the threesome. NEVER! Never a question about Mr. Brilliant’s background. Never a hint of ethical misgiving about the 2:00 am stunt. And, they can dress it up all they want, but the "reorganization" has been given up on more than one occasion as being for rather nefarious reasons.
I would be OK with change when there has been some real thought put into it. Hell, I would even welcome change down in my end of town (yes, I live near the Schlomka/CoPar mess) if that change is thoughtfully done. However, this business of running thru town like a band of thugs with a giant torch, burning everything in site doesn’t work.
posted by Frostbrand @ 3:29 PM
13 Comments:
At 9:50 PM,
Anonymous said…
I for one have no problem with the processes that I have seen.
Ethics? I always find this subject interesting because my experience has taught me that whenever someone in government does something you don't like but can't do anything about, you use the smear tactic of claiming that they or their actions are "unethical".
Do I think that they would have won if citizens knew every vote they were going to take in advance? I say yes. Take a look at the competition. Elections are not about the best person getting elected. What they are about is the best person who can make it through the process. The best people made it. Remember that the deciding vote was the special election which Cave took with 70%?
Enough with this crying about 2am council meetings. This city manager thing had been on the agenda a dozen times before they hired Copeland. The only citizens who missed out on an opportunity to voice their opinions on the city manager search were those who didn't care or were living under a rock. Bottom line is that the manager works for the majority of the council, not for the people. If the manager worked for the people, they would call them a city executive or county executive and the people would directly elect them like they do in many other states.
In Minnesota, by law the public doesn't even have a right to voice their opinion on the issue at a council meeting. Maplewood residents should feel fortunate that they don't go the route of Saint Paul which follows the laws in this area pretty strictly.
The way people talk here, you would think that they called a meeting unannounced for 2am. Reality is that the meeting started at 7pm and it was one of the last things on the agenda. Last time I checked, it took either a supermajority or unanimous vote to meet after 10pm or 11pm? Apparently members don't have a problem meeting late night.
These personal attacks against Copeland are disgraceful. Bottom line again is that only the council majority determines whether the qualifications of the manager are sufficient, and are in line with state law.
Enough with this citizen micromanagement of council affairs. You as citizens don't have a right to pick the city manager. You don't have the right to speak on most issues at council meetings. You don't have the right to set the qualifications for your city manager. If you want these rights, either go complain to your state legislators for a change in statutory law, or go out and gather the 500 signatures and put the city on the route of becoming a charter city.
On this issue of citizens guessing how much thought council members put into issues prior to voting, I wonder if we have some mind readers in our city. The fact is that 99% of the elected officials will tell you that most of the work they do is done outside the council chamber or legislative chamber or whatever governing body we are talking about. If I have a complaint, it is that not enough work is being done outside of Maplewood council meetings. This is why Maplewood meetings last so long. They spend time talking about issues and asking questions that should have been done before the meeting began.
Seeing an elected official cast a vote after little discussion doesn't tell me that they were uneducated. In most cases, it tells me that they did their homework.
At 10:05 PM,
Frostbrand said…
> Remember that the deciding vote was
> the special election which Cave took
> with 70%?
Hello, troll from 64.131.7.123.
64% <> 70%
This message was brought to you by the Internet Remedial Math & Logic Program.
Thanks for stopping by!
At 10:13 PM,
Anonymous said…
So Cave won with 64% of the vote. Did you know that is a larger margin that people like our Governor? Most of the members of the State Senate? Most of the members of the State House?
64% is pretty respectable in my book. I think the word "mandate" comes to mind.
At 10:24 PM,
Frostbrand said…
> The way people talk here, you would
> think that they called a meeting
> unannounced for 2am. Reality is that
> the meeting started at 7pm and it
> was one of the last things on the
> agenda.
The agenda item was the selection of a search firm, not the appointment of Copeland.
The item could have been put on the agenda prior to the meeting, if Hjelle had so requested; or he could have asked for the item to be added during the approval of agenda phase at the start of the meeting.
He did not. In fact, he said prefaced his motion by saying it was "off-topic." And Diana did not call him on it, the way she has refused to allow Rossbach to make motions on non-agenda items in the recent past.
Hjelle is a coward and a blowhard who wanted to give his little prepared speech (which certainly proves he knew what he was going to do before the meeting, and could have put it on the agenda) but did not want to face the withering stares of angry citizens while he made his motion. That's why he did it the way he did, and why he and Cave and Longrie refused to table the matter for a later meeting where the public could comment and a full five members of the council could be present to consider the matter.
I'm not crying, I'm angry. This instance encapsulates so much that is utterly wrong and unethical about the Gang of Three and their contempt for process.
At 10:55 PM,
Frostbrand said…
> So Cave won with 64% of the vote.
Indeed she did.
And you decided that "64%" and "70%" are the same thing, and inserted that into Wikipedia in attempt to make more people believe that.
This demonstrates that (a) you can't check facts on your own to save your life, and (b) you have a very imprecise grasp of numbers, to put it generously
Thus, this is more evidence that everything said by the Troll from 64.131.7.123 should be presumed false until proven otherwise.
> And there is a significant
> difference between Did you know
> that is a larger margin that
> people like our Governor?
You know, I did know that!
> Most of the members of the State
> Senate?
Yeah, but our state senator (the one you were bashing earlier) got almost 67%.
> Most of the members of the State
> House?
Yeah, but Maplewood's reps, Lillie and Slawik, both got better than 66%.
And needless to say, those were regular elections in November, and the turnout was a lot higher than 12%. :)
But sure, call Cave's election a "mandate" if it makes you happy. I'm sure it means that all Maplewood is permanently in love with her and everything she and her Mistress Diana want to do...
You do think that Chuck, Nora and Leon all have even stronger mandates too then, right?
At 12:56 AM,
Anonymous said…
Yes, the agenda item was the appointment of a search firm for city manager. Rather than conduct a search, they appointed the interim manager as manager. Sounds pretty similar to me.
Last time I checked, there was no law that said that the council could only take exactly the word for word action which was enshrined into the discription on the council agenda. If that was the case, government would grind to a halt.
Fact still is out there that this is a council appointment, not a citizen referendum for manager appointment. The public had plenty of time to offer their comments on the whole process. Some of the citizens did just that by yelling and shouting at a public meeting like my kid used to do years ago when he was small.
Yes the line item discription could have been revised at the start of the meeting. Would that have blunted all criticism? Who are we kidding?
I have to disagree with Hjelle's statement that his motion was off topic. It was not. I believe off topic is wanting to put forward a motion to buy playground equipment when the agenda item is about alcohol enforcement.
Could they have tabled the item? Yes. But you typically table an item if public comment is required, which was not. Or if the public never had opportunities to comment on the general issue, which they had. Or if you think that more information is going to change the outcome, which it would have not. This belief that somehow the public would have the opportunity to comment on a motion to hire an employee is bizarre. We elect people to make certain decisions. In Maplewood, the law says that the council hires the manager, not the people. Process followed 100% correctly.
As I have said before 64% and 70% both signal a big win. Once you pass 60%, some people say it doesn't matter.
This talk that a 64% victory doesn't mean much because of low turnout is meaningless. Maplewood has low turnout in all elections, an embarassment in my opinion, but it is low because we elect in the odd year. No one in Maplewood is ever going to have the support of over 50% of the registered voters like our state legislators have, because we have a difficult time getting just 25% of the registred voters to just show up.
So does the fact that Cave won 64% out of a small number of voters make her election somehow lack legitimacy? Well if it does, then Rossbach, Jueneman, Cardinal, Bastian, Hjelle, and Longrie's elections all lacked legitimacy too.
Maplewood has dismal turnout and so far no one on the council or out there in the general public has taken any action to address the problem.
The term "mandate" applies to anyone who wins by a large percentage. It also applies to multiple people who win elections by large margins. It also applies to political parties which win a number of seats regardless of the margins. Just because 80% of the people in our city don't routinely vote in city elections, doesn't tarnish the word or make its use inappropriate.
At 10:55 AM,
Anonymous said…
Longrie-ite:
I'm sorry, but I can do nothing at this point but resort to name calling. (...and laughing uncontrollably.)
You are an idiot!! Just like the three that you support.
I have said it before and I will say it again (Begin sarcasm in case your feeble mind doesn't get it) I love having elected officials who play ONLY by the letter of the law. (End sarcasm for those idiots, er, Longrie-ites not playing along). What happened to doing the "right" thing?
Hjelle's 2am stunt was nothing less than a chicken s... move. (Just like someone trying to hide their identity by spoofing their IP.) It was a move by someone who didn't want to face the music. It was obvious that he was reading from a prepared statement. So, he knew ahead of time what he was going to do. The agenda item reads "Selection of Firm to Coordinate the City Manager Hiring Process". Nowhere in that item do I read that they are thinking about changing the title from interim to (semi)permanent. Since he knew he was going this direction, why didn't he change the agenda at 7:00? Really, why? How many people do you think there would've been at the meeting if he had done this?
Of course, it is plausible that he could have come up with that prepared statement during the meeting. However, if he was doing so, how much was he paying attention to the other business during the evening?
Your reasoning here is so laughable it is sad. How much Haldol are you on, anyway? You may want to go back to the doctor as your meds seem to be doing more bad than good. Perhaps a switch to Thorazine would help...
At 10:57 AM,
Anonymous said…
"Do I think that they would have won if citizens knew every vote they were going to take in advance? I say yes."
Perhaps you are correct. However, I know of at least one vote that would have changed. Even though this is fact, I am curious to see how you spin out of this one...
At 11:00 AM,
Anonymous said…
"only the council majority determines whether the qualifications of the manager are sufficient"
The "majority" set the qualifications and then the "majority" went against them. Hjelle himself proposed the qualifications. This has been fleshed out before. Did you not read this one? Or do you chose to just ignore those facts that don't fit you twisted arguments?
At 11:04 AM,
Anonymous said…
"most of the work they do is done outside the council chamber"
"it tells me that they did their homework."
If you count secret meetings or serial (or otherwise) e-mails to decide public policy as work or homework, then you are correct in the case of the three muketeers. The only problem is, I define this as violating the open meeting law...
At 11:06 AM,
Anonymous said…
"Yes, the agenda item was the appointment of a search firm for city manager. Rather than conduct a search, they appointed the interim manager as manager. Sounds pretty similar to me."
Again..this is the Haldol talking. This is like saying a skunk is pretty similar to a cat. Please, get to the doctor soon before someone gets hurt!
At 11:11 AM,
Anonymous said…
"Or if you think that more information is going to change the outcome, which it would have not."
Didn't the very public discussion on the franchise fee/tax (which one is it anyway?) have any effect?
Then again, their minds had been made up in their secret meetings back in December & January. So perhaps your supposition about discussion not having an effect is correct. No amount of discussion would have made any difference. Maybe you are more brilliant that we have been giving you credit for.
Where does one get that Haldol stuff anyway?
At 11:15 AM,
Anonymous said…
Dear longrie-ite
Lets see...
64 = 70
In all of the math that I have had including all the way thru partial differential equations, the above statement would have been false. Just like the rest of the reasoning you put forth.
Please. Go away. You're making my head spin.
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