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Merry Christmas, Mason City: We have at least one more year of Bookmeyer and his crew

Editorial by Matt Marquardt –

A few random thoughts this Christmas Eve morning.

Of course I have been thinking more and more about our city government ever since Mayor Eric Bookmeyer and at-large city councilman Scott Tornquist threatened to have me removed from the last council meeting.  I’ve had about a dozen or more good discussions with concerned citizens in the days following that incident about how to become more involved and what’s wrong with the direction the city has taken in the last three years.

From my perspective, simply being a concerned citizen who attends meetings and gets involved is something I’m content with and I believe many, many more citizens should be doing this.  Right now, we have a government BY a few, FOR a few.  This mayor and council does not serve us all equally nor does it intend to.  It is shameful that the mayor and his”elite” club have unplugged and dis-engaged the common person from the process while certain other people can actually use City Hall as a check book for their pet projects (see, sculptures).  We have only ourselves to blame for this.  Democracy requires citizen engagement and participation, and Mason City is sorely lacking this.

Bookmeyer, Tornquist and the rest of the council once proclaimed “jobs, jobs, jobs” as their goal for Mason City.  Looking over their new goals and priorities, just released for 2013, they seem to have admitted defeat on this.  I see Blue Zones mentioned twice but nothing about increasing jobs.  This mayor and council has failed to bring any new meaningful job creation to the city as employers continue to slip away.  Companies like Soy Energy and IC System are on their way out of town, and others like American Crystal Sugar continue to under-employ. I never once saw this mayor nor a council member show up at a meeting for locked-out Crystal Sugar workers.  It may have conflicted with their tee-times or AA meetings.

I also see “commitment to excellence in government services” as a goal.  If they mean serving the Chamber of Commerce and Mercy while ignoring the average person, they are well on their way to achieving this goal.  As Jean Marinos pointed out, she relies on city staff to do her job; all she will do is vote and show up for meetings when she is not in Europe.  She was a failure as Mayor from 2003-2006 and now as a council member and is not qualified to achieve anything excellent except the ownership of a BMW.  I will be elaborating on her failures soon.

Another priority is “gateway improvements” at the north end and southport.  Nice goal considering you have left these areas virtually untouched and ignored for years and spent all your time and resources – millions of dollars – on a few square blocks downtown.  Thanks for the leftovers, Eric.  I’m curious to see your vision here.  Will you be building new “Welcome to Mason City” signs at these locations?  Will you finally recruit a grocery store to Southport?

I’ll wrap up here, but I hope anyone from Mason City who is reading this gives themselves the gift of knowledge and participation in your local government in 2013.

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