[RP TownTalk] Decorum

[Jonathan Ebbeler]

Alison

Nice ad hominem post.

So in your limited time you can write a page long email to me telling me what my agenda is and then characterize my motivations for posting as sour grapes but you can't be bothered to debate anything substantively? Ok.

While we are talking about kids please be reminded that Archer illegally refused to swear me into office last June as my daughter was born in a very complicated pregnancy that had a 25% mortality rate for both my wife and child.  This is about sour grapes this is about exposing bad deeds and abuses of power for what they are.  Why don't you ask Alan Thompson about the conversation he and I had the night before.  Alan tried to talk Vern out of his position and just swear me in.  Alan told me he spent the good part of an hour reminding Vern that he had an obligation to swear me in and the Mayor still refused.

On top of that, it wasn't enough for Vern just to try to effect his agenda to keep me out of office on his own, he spent north of $10k in taxpayer money on legal fees doing so.  In a year of financial crisis are you honestly going to turn a blind eye to this?  Read the budget posts, what the Mayor and Council did was bankrupt the town and balanced the budget with nonsense.  They might as well of had a revenue line item called 'candy wrapper recycling proceeds'; it has just as much validity as 'bond proceeds.'  If I wasn't posting what I posted no one would be aware of things told to the public, like the Cafritz project would be self-financed and the town wouldn't be asked to pay taxes towards this.  If I hadn't posted other things Council would violate the law routinely, at least getting called out on it they have to rescind laws on the fly to make their actions legal.

This isn't a game.  If it were you would realize how amusing it is to sit in my seat and know that Vernon didn't care about stopping the 7-11.  Why don't you ask any of the other Councilmembers how that conversation went when we discussed it and let's see if they will be honest about it.  Vernon went into our meeting telling us we shouldn't waste the money on a lawsuit and it wouldn't matter anyway because the County was likely to do the same thing even if we were successful in remanding it.  He told me privately about how a 7-11 wouldn't be the worst thing in the world and at least that site would be more attractive and I should stand down and vote it through.  Did any of you not notice how he was absent at the Planning Board hearings?

It is not condescending to ask you to be critical thinkers.  I am not asking you to believe me, like me, or agree with me.  I post what I post because my comments and questions are backed up by hard evidence.  In all these posts there hasn't been a single point proffered by anyway that disputes what I am saying.  These are complicated issues and they are long so as to provide the requisite information for the public.  This list was started precisely for this reason back in the Field of Dreams era.

The fact that you and others even think it is appropriate for an elected official in a small town not to respond to constituent questions boggles my mind.  By explicitly giving him the nod that it is ok, you enable the behavior.

It is fair and reasonable to ask elected officials to defend their actions.  It is fair and reasonable to identify illegal actions.  It is fair and reasonable to identify and shed the public light on a government behaving in a manner that is not open or transparent.  It is fair and reasonable to identify conflicts of interests and abuses of power.  None of those are simple conversations and they do take bandwidth.

Isn't it time to tune me out :)

JWE
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