Response to Concerns from Acting City Manager / Vice-Mayor Block

Although you have been hiding in our blog under various names, such as Common, Stop the Anger, and now anonymous, your identity has been pretty obvious by your comments.  Your accusations on other blogs such as the Ledger blog about us screening comments and selecting only the ones we want to post are unfounded.  We realized that many individuals were receiving error messages from blogger due to the default settings on blogger requiring a blogger ID to post comments.  In attempts to fix this issue we found out how to open the blog up to everyone including anonymous comments, but opted to require moderation on comments to prevent profanity and other spam from littering the blog.  This is normal blog protocol and the same protocol exercised on the Ledger blog that you like so much.

Regarding the facts behind our opinions on dissolving the city, the information we have gathered to date on this issue is found throughout this blog and was also handed out and explained at the petition signing in the park that you chose not to attend.  We try to add to this information daily to keep the public informed.  Instead of baiting us to open mouth, insert foot so you can pick our arguments apart, why don’t the city officials provide the public with updated information regarding current city debt figures and allow the public to ask questions during meetings instead of hiding behind a perceived veil of secrecy?  Try being proactive on this matter instead of reactive and the people will respond in kind.  On our blog, why don’t you post reasons and financial numbers in favor of keeping the city?  We have tried to find them and honestly can’t find any strong enough reasons to change our minds.

In regards to the outbursts in the Friday night’s meeting, those comments were from many outraged and frustrated citizens trying to get answers to questions and concerns the City Council refused to entertain.  If the City Council let the people speak, maybe the public would not be so frustrated and feel that the outbursts were their only way to be heard.  The constitution protects the public’s freedom of speech.  The gathering at the park, running our blog, answering media questions, and requesting that the public contact government officials about how they feel the city is being run are just the way we have chosen to express ourselves.  You too can start your own blog for free at www.blogger.com.  It is available to everyone and very user friendly.  This same freedom of speech can be exercised by city officials to keep the public informed of what is going on and answering the public’s questions when asked instead of hiding behind procedures and misquoting Sunshine Law saying that they are not able to discuss some of these issues with the public.  The Mayor misquoted the Sunshine Law to a few residents right in front of me during the petition signing as a reason not to answer their legitimate questions.  The Sunshine Law is in place to keep public officials from discussing issues amongst themselves without the public’s knowledge in order to maintain transparent government, not the opposite.

Absolutely no efforts were made to prevent the Mayor Joe LaCascia from passing out any literature.  If you would have taken the time to show up to the park yourself, you would have seen what happened.  Two of your volunteers were at the park bright and early Saturday morning with your literature to hand out to the public.  We did not discourage this at all.  After we spoke with your volunteers about the thinking behind our point of view, and the fact that most of the public were just handing the literature right back to them, they decided that they no longer wanted to pass out this literature and handed it to the Mayor shortly after he arrived.  People who showed up to the petition signing had concerns that this literature was produced using tax payer dollars without their consent, which is illegal.  Those are the facts about why your literature did not get handed out as you had planned at our petition signing.

We feel there has been dialog and respect from our group.  As far as working towards a common goal, why not try listening to the majority of the people and find a peaceful and less costly way to dissolve the city instead of hiring legal council to fight multiple groups costing the tax payers even more money and trying to keep the city running like “business as usual.”  If the city is so financially sound, why did an “emergency” meeting have to be called to discuss how to pay a bill that was two years overdue?  According to state statute 120.525 “emergency” meetings are reserved only for instances when an agency finds that an immediate danger to the public health, safety, or welfare requires immediate action.  How to pay an overdue bill in attempts to prevent the Governor from being notified to declare a financial state of emergency, which will in essence put a stop to all city spending and require the city to come up with a plan to get out of its financial hole, does not fall under that “emergency” definition, nor does it give the public confidence that the city is as financially sound as you say.

If there are so many others, as you say, that feel the same way you do about saving the city and all the good it stands for, they are free to express themselves on our blog just like everyone else.  I have not seen many other pro-city comments other than yours.