Is it fair to the public when there are 4 meetings that discuss a particular issue and a certain segment of the business industry stays away (some didn’t) and does not give their input in the public meetings. Then after there is a public decision made, then that segment of the business industry comes in and wants to start the discussion over before the City Council votes . . . outside of the view of the public.
It happened this morning, and when I brought this up – I was accused of being “unhelpful”.
Excuse me . . . I’m a public official. We work in the public, not in smoky back rooms, regardless of what certain segments of the business industry want us to do. We are government, responsible to “the people”. Its about integrity. Its about transparency. Its about fairness.
Not to mention, its absolutely disrespectful to our citizen committee members who have spent hours of their valuable time in good faith working on something just to have it flushed down the toilet because a certain segment of the business community didn’t feel like they had to participate in the public process.
As a taxpayer, as a citizen, don’t you feel ripped off? And how can you have faith in the government if this is the way that it works? No wonder the public gets so mad at the City Council because we “don’t listen”. That’s the way certain segments of the business community want it – and after all – some people think they are the most important constituent of the City Council. I disagree, our most important constituents are the people of this city – not a bunch of corporate entities.
(Note: I said certain segments of the business community. This means that I don’t think that about all businesses.)
