Boom Chicka Wow Wow
5 hours ago
9/04/2005
Unlawful? Underhanded? Unethical? Which?
Hi All, Here is a little scenario I want to put forth. What if a person decided on their own hook, and in their own home, to "call" a "meeting" of the "board" that oversees the process of the job held by this person? Oh yes, and be sure NOT to invite to the same "meeting", two of the members of said entity who will not acquiesce(SP) to your requests/demands without due diligence? Well this happened a couple days ago and the Board in question is one that we are all familiar with. I was not, and am not privy to what was said there, or what if anything was decided on, to be voted on at a later meeting. Everyone who did not have a clue, had a lot to say about what went on at these previous, OPEN meetings. Now it appears that 7/9 ths of this board has taken it upon themselves to hold some sort of a clandestine meeting without the knowledge of the rest! What does this sound like to you. I understand they were discussing staffing issues, and solutions to same. Having an invited guest as a speaker to tell them how to do their job was another highlight of the evening. I don't know if all members were "sworn to secrecey" or what, but if I had been one of the members invited, when I found out that a select few were intentionally un-invited, I would have left the room and urged the rest of my fellow mwmbers to do the same! This is just plain Bull****!! I thought the days of backroom politics were to become extinct in my generation, but it apparently has flourished here on this little piece of rock. I would encourage the Town Council to abolish the whole damn board and start anew with a new set of people. Ethicality here in this board, has leaked right out through the floorboards and into the bilges with the rest of a few things called honor and accountability. PISSED again, I say, TIFN
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
6 comments:
I won't get involved as to the ethics of this possible incident, but here in Texas the Attorney General has investigated several violations of what we call the Texas Open Meeting Act, or TOMA. At issue was when a quorum of officials conducted business, such as "taking action" or voting without posting the meeting 72 hours in advance and opening the meeting to the public. It is possible to meet to discuss employee actions in private but the meeting must still be posted and noticed. In other words, no voting in the restroom or at someone's backyard retreat, etc.
The remedy (for the 2 cases I know about) was to have the offending officials, including the town lawyer and manager and secretary, attend ethics and Open Meetings training. Oooooh, they did not like this at all. They had to pay for the training, take two days off from work to attend training in another town, and take an exit test!
Oogah say "that's pretty good medicine for the first time around."
Well Everette, instead of doing this song and dance here, why don't you go to the next town council meeting and demand that your elected represenatives do something about it? It is their job and your civic duty.
Everett what board are you refering to?
I am not familare with a nine member board.
how about naming the Board so people know what you're talking about?
If anyone had been reading the local paper for the last couple of months, it would be real easy to figure out who I was talking about. It is the one where absolutely no one ever attended the OPEN meetings that were held every month,but they had a LOT to say about what they assumed went on at these meetings. It is the only nine member board on the Island and it is to be soon increased to an eleven member board.I guess if I said Medical Services that would let the feline escape from the retaining device.
I have since learned that a few of the board members who attended did so out of curiosity as to what was to transpire, and that they were rather preturbed at the turn of events, so I'll not cast anymore aspersions on their honor an integrity as a whole, as I have no idea which was which.
It really amazes me that there are people that wish to destroy 25 years of hard work by all the past and present members of the board, solely because they happen to disagree with the way the Center is run, and that there is a personality conflict between soome of the folks involved. Many ideas have been floated to the members on how to run certain aspects of the Center. Some of them were good and were incorporated into the daily business. Some turned out to be dogs and were rejected. So people who have had these same ideas occur to them, should put them before the board again and it will be explained why they were turned down the first time, or why they are now in place and working. Just don't throw the baby out with the bath water. There is an old maxim that has been around for years and it should apply here. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it!!" And it certainly is NOT broke right now, nor will it be in the forseeable future if people with good intentions but not enough knowledge of the operations would keep their hands off and their mouths firmly zipped.
I don't know, Everett, I'm wading my way through the local politics down here at the southermost part of Texas and you know, it is the same, small-town politics. Yup, you're talking to the Secretary of the Ad Hoc Bay Task Force of South Padre Island here! So your humble secretary asks a simple question about what is "commercializing" bay access versus the exanding the true commercial joints and I ended up with World War III. I had the bigwigs like the wardens and Mayor a-calling me and people being "talked to" and everything except for crowds armed with sharp sticks & pikes. Sound familiar?
Democracy at its finest is rather messy, but I continue on, asking dumb questions like that character Columbo on the old TV series. Peter Faulk, was it? Anyway, being an outsider in my own town certainly has its political advantages - and I don't have any anonymous people from Block Island telling me I don't have any frigging "experience!" -sam
Post a Comment