Before you consider the NEW Charter Amendment CHANGES, let's look back at what council did and said with the last changes. -- Inside River Oaks

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Date Posted: 12:31:45 04/07/19 Sun
Author: Johnny Claridge
Subject: Before you consider the NEW Charter Amendment CHANGES, let's look back at what council did and said with the last changes.

In 2005 our city council brought forth a handful of amendment changes including a city manager and council pay. All failed.(although council and the mayor get a gas allowance each month. 100.00 per council and 200.00 for the mayor) So they waited another four years and brought back just a few.

The first one was to not have to have two council meetings a month if emergency should arise. These exceptions were made clear by council members Holland, Crews and Gordon at three separate town hall meetings. All three stated the only reason we would not have two council meetings a month would be due to holidays, other city meetings such as mayor's council, and lastly, severe weather, which had happened in the past. These statements paid very heartfelt to the public. End result: Not too long after the election they didn't have a second city meeting. No bad weather, no holiday, no other city meetings. It was stated this was a mayor's choice. Nobody defended their positions for what they promised. As an end result of these missed meetings was Marvin having to make decisions and later get council approval which happened at least twice which included a right of way issue. You may not think this is a big deal, but you can bet they'll be using this as a reason to have a city manager. And you can also look at all the workshops they held on Saturdays that could have been held on a Tuesday night if they didn't have enough agenda items to discuss on that second council meeting. We don't know how many citizens or businesses had decisions delayed by these missed meetings. The latest example was the missed Jan 8 meeting and then they had a Jan 12th Saturday workshop. five city employees giving up their Saturday starting at 8am. plus overtime which they may have received on a Tuesday anyway.

Now to the three year terms: Two promises were made about the three year terms. 1. benefit of going to three year terms was council could NOT appoint a replacement should someone step down. Now they want to change it. They created the problem and now want to create the solution. Next promise was that going to three year terms would save the city money. Never could understand how that was possible, considering to save money you would have to not have an election. Quite the opposite happened. When you went to three year terms you had to get 50% plus 1 vote to win the seat. So in other words, if there wasn't a clear majority you would have a run off. And according to Marvin at a public meeting this could cost as much as 25,000.

Since the passing of the three year terms we've had three runoffs. So instead of saving money...which we would have if they left it at two year terms, we are spending way more tax dollar money than the usual election costs which is somewhere between 5,000-6800.

So now we have two new Props. which I will post in another discussion later.

I'm pointing the last charter amendments out now to show you what can happens when you give up YOUR POWER as a tax paying citizen to the govt.

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