Op-ed: City council should be investigated for collusion (by Peter Children)

Common sense is lacking here in our community, unbelievably so.  The main problem are personalities; conflicting, and entrenched with a sense of entitlement fueled by petty prejudices and spite.  There are armed camps here, different groups that ignore 95% of the population’s wishes.

We have a mayor with an affinity for alcohol; a man who had a past record of arrests in Clinton, Iowa… here we put him in charge.  We have a city council who should be investigated by the attorney general’s office for organized collusion.

The mayor appoints a panel to study the possibility of an “All Events Center,” the panel is hand picked, a stacked deck with those to whom the facility would in some way personally benefit each financially.  It was a public joke, much like the guy who put the panel together.

Alex Kuhn rode in the front seat of the patrol car for the first time and the Globe-Gazette put his picture in the paper. How nice; he raised hell in a local bar and the same paper fell mute.  Janet Solberg is in a “quid pro quo “ relationship with Eric; insurance for votes. Turncoat, who lied on camera, was sent as an enforcer to the landfill to get them in line for Eric and ended up having his lunch eaten.  Trout makes an impassioned plea that falls on deaf ears.  Willet the development director who has developed nothing, also speaks and keeps his record of zero accomplishment intact.  Hickey is just taking up space, nothing more; he’s a hired vote……his reward is to be able to drink with the mayor after the meeting….but on other nights he’s on his own. He’s what is called low maintenance.  John Lee; everything that was said about him before the election was a lie; he is not his own man.  Jean Marinos wants to be anywhere except at that table, and it shows.

Then there is the court house and the supervisors, that’s like jumping  out of the fire and into the frying pan.  Until  NIT came on, no one knew they where there. They were a very quiet little group, non committal shying away from any and all attention until NIT started covering  their meetings;  meeting where the public were not encouraged to speak or ask questions…until now when NIT turned on the lights.  This is a part time job where their pay exceeds $125.00 a day seven days a week with more benefits than you could ever hope for…insurance, mileage, meals along with God only knows what else.  Look around you, what have these people accomplished that you can see? How about the fair, what else, can you point to something positive?

Then there is this “untouchable fair board; this ominous body of people who run the fair grounds; what an absolute joke that is, the problem is that it is a “sick” joke played on the people who live here and suffer through fairs that are an embarrassment.  Currently these people are being sued by Wanda Kruse for wrong doing.  There is a better than even chance this case will never see the inside of a courtroom because too many unknown facts could be reveled…that is my opinion. There could be questions asked like, “where did the money go?”  There could be an “outside audit” preformed, individual personal financial inquires could be demanded of each board member….no is will be settled outside of court…far outside.

Is this community any different than countless others around the country?  No it isn’t, they are all pretty much the same.  But should we settle for that axiom? No we shouldn’t, we should strive to get it right; there needs to be a citizen’s council apart from the lock step city council, a citizen’s advisory board independent from city government that could act as a watch dog over self interests and inept governing.

But the greatest deterrent against what has permeated our system of government, both city and country, is voting; you people just do not vote. And those who are now the problem count on that single fact, they plan on it, they count on you not to take the few minutes it might take to cast a vote to end a history of no accomplishment served up by career politicos who have sucked the blood of your labor for a quarter century and produced nothing in return.  This city could easily serve as an example of what happens when qualified voters stay away from the voting booth. Your vote is what people in the Middle East are dying for everyday, why do you think everyone wants to come here; they don’t want your material wealth, they want to make their own choices in life, they want to vote.  This next election lets set new records at the polls, and lets get that new broom, the one that sweeps clean….

Peter Children