Occasional Good Idea Between the Ugliness at Manchester Aldermanic Meetings

The Manchester Board of Aldermen is the group that keeps giving, at least to members of the local media who cover city government and politics. I have written three columns recently just on the show that is provided free of charge at the meetings.

I write a similar column in the Chesterfield Patch. Sometimes I wonder where the next column is coming from. Chesterfield meetings are over in 20 minutes. Sometimes the city council meetings are canceled because there is nothing on the agenda. I have never heard a raised voice at a Chesterfield meeting. I'd even call them dull. I recently wrote a column about onion rings in Chesterfield because of a lack of local political issues.

I never have a problem coming up with column ideas for this site. Town and Country meetings provide neighbor conflicts, deer conflicts and secret e-mails with veiled threats sent from one alderman to another, but they are nothing compared to Manchester meetings. Manchester meetings are the mother lode, the deep well or the endless buffet for a columnist. While I scribble notes frantically of the outrageous statements, sometimes good ideas come forward and get swallowed up in the angry discourse.

Alderman Bob Tullock wanting to put city expenses reports on the city website is probably a good idea. However, Tullock wants all expenditures on the website. This would include municipal court bond refunds and other regular minor refunds to citizens. A better idea is to post the warrant list on the website. The warrant list is the list of expenditures that the aldermen have to approve so the checks can be cut. 

Manchester aldermen get a printout of this list delivered to them before every meeting. There is no reason these lists should not be made public so the citizens can see where money is being spent.

One faction of aldermen and the mayor seem to be against providing too much public information for citizens to view free of charge. 

How can letting the public know where their money is going be a bad thing?

It is hard not to notice that on some occasions all the new items on the agenda are from Tullock. It seems that Tullock would have a better chance getting the opposition to consider his legislation if he would introduce just one new item a month. At the last meeting, he had four new items on the agenda. They included resolutions to censure Alderman Mike Clement, to obtain an opinion from the Attorney General’s Office on his disputed election as board president, to post all city expenses on the city website and to mail letters to all city households concerning Alderman Mike Clement’s ethics violation.

The resolution for the attorney general’s opinion was a waste of time, because the Attorney General can only give opinions to state legislators; statewide elected officials, state department heads and county prosecutors. Click here to see for yourself. The measure failed on a 4-3 vote.

The resolution to mail a letter to all city households about Clement’s ethics fine is clearly political in nature, and is a great waste of money. That mailing would cost the city several thousand dollars.

The resolution to censure Clement would be OK if you thought you would likely have the votes for it to pass. Clearly the votes weren’t there, and Tullock withdrew it.

The resolution to post city expenses on the website was also withdrawn by Tullock after complaints were raised by the only nonelected person on the dais, city attorney Patrick Gunn.

Mike Clement was also guilty of fanning the flames of discontent when he opened the meeting reading a statement for 22 minutes about his ethics violation. It might have been OK if it was about Clement’s ethics violation, but halfway through, he went back to 2005 and talked about other people filing ethics complaints and began attacking Tullock. This caused Tullock to answer back.

By the end of the night, four different aldermen had raised their voices at each other.  

“This is for all of you up there. Running each other down and trying to hurt each other is wrong. It is sad,” Manchester resident Pauline Baer said to the board. She had a very valid point.

Mayor Dave Willson could do more to calm things down, but so far, he has shown no desire to do so.

Willson‘s job is to run the meetings. He routinely allows citizens to verbally attack aldermen, normally Tullock and Hal Roth. Citizens have a right to address the board and give their opinions on issues, but attacking elected officials should not be allowed. 

Willson should attempt to bring all the aldermen back on point when they start wandering from topics on the agenda to taking shots at each other.

It is nice to see opposing views among elected officials. It is ensures legislation is discussed and looked at from all sides. I know it is possible for people with opposing views to be civil, but that is a hard task to accomplish in Manchester.