Voting a farce
To the editor:
At a meeting of the City Council, held on Nov. 10, 2008, City Councilmember Burch made a motion to accept a plurality as a possible culmination of the selection process to select the replacement of Mayor Feichthaler. It passed four to three with Burch, Bertolini, Day and Donnell voting to approve. City Attorney Menendez came in after that vote and said that she “strongly recommended” against doing that, because the Charter specifies that an affirmative vote of at least four members of the Council is required to enact anything. Councilmember Day then came back in and said that was what he had been talking about. He said that if there was a plurality of three votes cast for any one candidate and two other finalists received two votes each, then in order to comply with the legal requirement for a minimum of four votes, the Council would then make it unanimous by voting to confirm the person who received the three votes as the next mayor. I assumed that was the way the election would be handled. And I also think I heard Mayor Pro-Tem Donnell repeat that as the method which would be followed.
That is not what happened during the following week when the Council voted. It turns out that inviting the public to participate as candidates for the mayor’s job was a big waste of their time. As predicted by some, none of the public candidates were seriously considered. The second round of votes resulted in Councilmember Deile receiving three votes, with council members Burch and Bertolini each receiving only two votes. Many in the audience thought, that was it … Deile won. But without missing a beat, Mr. Donnell on his own and ignoring the prior week’s vote, then called for a run-off between the two losers. He did it so fast, there was no objection from anyone including, Mr. Day who pushed for the methodology of making the three vote plurality winner, the winner by acclimation. It was clear to me, that the four people who want MWH to continue the Utility Expansion, made sure that they would have a majority in any new Council makeup and it appears they have succeeded. All four now voted for Mr. Burch. It was almost like there was a pre-arranged script for Mr. Donnell to follow. Many people in the audience were shocked at what they were witnessing. One has to wonder what role Mr. Stewart, Ms. Menendez, city staff and MWH played in this fiat accompli?
I predict you will see SW 6&7 put back on the agenda immediately and that this time, it will be approved. Contracts worth hundreds of millions are at stake and the council members who will make this happen are Burch, Donnell, Bertolini and Day. They will do it in the name of progress and in so doing, they will have jeopardized many homeowners who are hanging on by a thread as well as jeopardizing their future political careers. The clear winner in this election was not Mr. Burch, it was the city staff, MWH and the preselected contractors MWH allows to bid on this massive project. The losers are the people in this city who will have to pay for what is turning out to be over a billion dollar project.
Sal Grosso
Cape Coral