City Beat 2-1-08

CITY BEAT

By George Murin
February 1, 2008

Washington- On January 25th council held a meeting which should have started at 6:30 p.m. but someone changed the clock in council chambers so that it was 8 minutes fast, so the meeting actually started early and those arriving late missed the first part of the meeting. (I was one of these late arrivals, entering the building exactly at 6:30.) I hope someone sets the clock right before the next meeting.

The meeting was fairly short lasting only about 40 minutes. There were only a few items on the agenda. The first was the re-hiring of Michael Behrens as I predicted last week and the vote on this was 5-0. The other items were the first readings of the proposed tax increase and amending the salary ordinance and the budget. But there were some interesting elements to this meeting.

The first of these was that the new members of council, Terry Faust and Thomas Blackhurst are falling into line behind Mayor Spossey and have yet to vote against anything proposed by council. Many voters I’ve talked with expected more from them and were hoping for more independent voices on council. (This may be a little unfair as they have only been in office about four weeks.) When it came for each of the councilmen to speak, these two had nothing to say. Councilman Matt Staniszewski spoke against the tax increase stating he “will not vote for it.” And that all council wants to do is “raise taxes and cut services…Taxpayers cannot bare this additional weight on their shoulders…They (some members of council) rather focus on personal and political attacks on an individual rather than facing the city’s problems.” Councilwoman Virginia Ullom declared her support for the tax increase and stated that “the city is in trouble...our taxes are going up too.” The Mayor spoke for nearly 15 minutes outlining the city’s problems and how he and council are addressing the situation. He ended with, (talking about the tax increase) “We don’t like it, I don’t like it …This is not going to be a popular administration…but we will bring back the city to where it should be.”

Another interesting development was the announcement, during the public participation of the meeting, by Dennis Caffrey, that he was involved in forming an advisory committee or watchdog group to help citizens and business owners in the city help city government. The most fascinating thing was to watch the expression on the mayor’s face while Caffrey was speaking; it seemed to be a look of amazement, disgust and anger. I’m not sure members of council will warm to this committee, even though Caffrey assured them this would be a positive thing not a negative one.

Also during public participation Fred Junko spoke about the tax raise. He told council that his taxes will increase 42.7% on one property and 52.62% on another. “This will take away; on one property 13.36%...and 31.85% (on another) of our revenues…These are enormous numbers for a business to overcome.” He was so visibly upset that he was nearly in tears as he spoke. His leases on his properties are long term and cannot be changed.

As I stated last week the people that will be most affected by this tax increase will be small businesses. Homeowners in the city may be upset but businesses are devastated. One councilmember stated that in four years the voters will forget about this, but I don’t think so, this tax increase is so large that it won’t go away in four years. I was surprised that more citizens were not at the meeting to complain. Some residents feel that Matt Staniszewski seems to be the councilman that the public can rally around to oppose this tax increase. This is one reason that some feel that Mayor Spossey is trying to remove him from council. Things are easier for council if the vote for the tax increase and any other controversial matters are unanimous.

After the meeting adjourned something took place that may be illegal or at least unethical; council met in private. What was discussed is unknown but this is when Mayor Spossey came out, he gave Staniszewski until Thursday January 31st to resign or he would have Police Chief Roger Blyth take action to remove him for violating his oath of office by committing a crime (referring to his D.U.I s). Friday morning should be entertaining.