It seems like only yesterday Mayor Cass was blasting the Democratic committee for “going the blog way” by embracing concepts of open, honest, and accountable city government. Those are the values that led the Democrats to create a platform that strives for ethics and integrity in government, increased citizen participation, and a more active council that operates respectfully and responsibly. That’s the platform that Councilor Cosentino objected to when he wrote a letter to the editor explaining why he was not interested in the committee’s support.
What a delight to see the Republican committee’s platform echo similar principles! Finally we’ve reached consensus that the current majority on council is leading the City astray. Republicans say: the taxes are too high, that we need to share services with the Town and County, that Council should meet twice a month, that the City should have committees to work on major issues rather than always operating as a committee of the whole, that the ‘curfew’ proposal is on the right track, that there should be no more “back room deals”, no more violations of the Open Meetings Law, that there should be a lakefront plan that isn’t the ‘same old same ole’ group.
Wow! Where have we heard that before? Well, in these blog postings:
Not to mention all of our responses to comments on some of the posts.
But now it seems worth mentioning that these very ideas being touted by Beckley and D’Amico in the newspaper as their own original brainstorms, were some of the very things they have publicly opposed.
For example, what prompted Beckley to have a change of heart on the tax rate? It was just this past budget cycle that he wrote a lengthy article on the virtue of the majority’s increase, claiming “It’s Only A Nickel.”
And D’Amico was happy to join the majority of council in the back room when they agreed to give City Manager Rich Rising a 5% retroactive raise without a completed performance evaluation. In fact, D’Amico didn’t even serve on the council during the period Rising was being evaluated on. But that didn’t stop him from casting the deciding vote on the matter, late at night, when the matter hadn’t even been included on the agenda.
And Beckley has been an outspoken supporter of projects requesting large public investments and/or tax breaks. He even criticized Councilors Augustine, Nyrop, and Espenscheid by name for asking “too many questions” about these projects.
Beckley and Rising are on the Geneva Arts Development Council board together (see the official listing on their website), and Beckley was quick to defend Rising’s plan to demolish a block of Main Street for a tax-exempt performing arts center. That’s “progress,” they say.
D’Amico has blasted our blog in the newspaper and at council meetings, but it seems that someone in the Republican party likes what they’ve been reading. But we all know that it’s one thing to share ideas, it’s another thing to share a commitment to putting those ideas into action. Beckley and D’Amico’s track record doesn’t give us any confidence that they can make good on their promises.
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