64° and Sunny
More pothole thoughts
I thought for sure I would have a special meeting notice in my inbox by now but I didn’t get one yet.
We drove down Porter Road Thursday. The dang thing looks practically repaved because so much has been patched.
By adding 4 hours of overtime daily for 21 days, funded with $108,000 in tribal revenue, the city would be able to fill twice as many potholes but that motion failed Wednesday.
An aside from that meeting: Perry spoke more loudly and closer to the mic but Acting Corporation Counsel Tom DeBoy who must hate these meetings, again got baited into responding to shouts from the gallery. It is a bad look for DeBoy who seems like a good guy in a tough position. As hard as it is, shut up already.
The failure of the vote last Wednesday can be blamed on 3 things.
- The overtime and Pothole Killer contract were combined on the agenda.
- Attending a council meeting and actually explaining things is beneath the dignity of Mayor Robert Restaino and his administration.
- Two Councilmembers voted no. Donta Myles frequently speaks as if not only did he not ask questions but he didn’t read his packet before the meeting. Brian Archie usually does the work but somehow didn’t ask the right questions before last week’s meeting.
- Council Chairperson Jim Perry or Traci Bax, functioning as Mayoral minions, were not ready to amend the agenda item to drop the overtime element so the Pothole Killer could move forward as it has in previous years. The other element of handling it that way is it would put the patch service on the same path as previous years. As the cliche says, doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results is the definition of insanity.
Thoughts on the Mayor’s weekly address
Fascinating Mayor Robert Restaino started out this week with a shout out to Mark Scheer but no specific comment about anything Mark has written in the Gazette. I won’t guess on why but passive-aggressive intimidation could be the reason.
Scheer wrote about how the DPW wrecked a family garden on Ontario Avenue last week. It was blown up on Facebook even before Mark’s piece.
I know there is more to that story but have not been able to run it down. Perception is reality and, at first blush, it looks bad for the administration.
Thoughts on council chaos
The Mayor also addressed the out-of-control council circus that brings biweekly chaos, chiding Donta Myles and Brian Archie for not supporting pothole repairs.
The silly thing is, though Scheer got a shoutout, Rick Pfeiffer did not. Rick covers the meetings but has, so far, not addressed the lack of decorum, lack of control from Chairperson Jim Perry or nastiness from the gallery.
You can watch the video of the meetings on Youtube, read my coverage here and then read Rick’s coverage in the Gazette. It is hard to imagine we are in the same meeting sitting next to each other.
