Council destroying the public trust
To the editor:
Our city government and staff have destroyed much of the trust of our residents. Of which there was little to begin with. Trust is something that is hard to earn and very easy to destroy. That became quite apparent in The National Citizen Survey. At last Monday’s council meeting more trust was destroyed.
One of the categories in The National Citizens Survey is public trust. In fact if you look at the public trust issues in that survey you will see that every one of the public trust issues is below the benchmark. In fact in some of the sub categories only 3 percent or 4 percent of the respondents are giving the city a score of excellent. After the mayoral appointment fiasco I have to wonder what those numbers look like now.
We installed a new mayor and the procedure was very clear. The procedure agreed upon was not followed. I have to wonder how anyone who sits on the dais could think that the process was smooth and fair since the plan agreed to was not followed.
You must ask yourself why? The only conclusion I can come to is that the strategy of using plurality to secure the objective was not working so a change in plan had become necessary to reach the preferred outcome. I can understand why some on the dais missed it at the time but I can’t understand why Mr. Burch who made the motion to go to a plural method of selection missed it. I have seen these types of gamesmanship used on the dais before. It’s not political process, it’s what you would call one up-manship.
Some of our council members are not trusted. There are residents that have perceived that there are conflicts of interest. This has been apparent for some time. So I have to ask: If residents don’t feel that this voting process went smooth and was fair, how can council members who have proclaimed the appointment process smooth and fair be trusted to determine if there was or is a conflict of interest when they vote?
Our government and the administration as a whole have a problem with public trust. Everyone on the dais knows about the results of the National Citizens Survey brought forth some months back. Yet we continue to kick sand in the face of the residents. You could say this whole process was an insult to the intelligence of our residents. I will not bother to address the shameful way they drew 21 residents into this process when council knew there was no way for them to participate in a fair manner. You wasted our time and your time. What was the point? Why the show? Why the charade? And please don’t tell me that the public should not have been involved because you did involve us.
John Sullivan
Cape Coral Minutemen