We had a very busy day yesterday, and weren’t able to follow up on Monday night’s palace insurgency, so we only briefly summarized things in this post. We’ll do our best to update you on the chaos now.
In preparation, we tried to view the meeting video on the Cable 3 web page. It was posted here, but when we tried to watch it, all we got was ‘good evening,’ over and over and over and over. But we did manage to use our connections to get a brief clip that gives you some idea of what took place at the special meeting:
As you know, the Mr. Manager issue was supposed to be dealt with in an Executive Session, but Councilors Watson, Wilson, Favreau, and Richardson voted to oppose that move, so the discussion was open to view.
In the end, Mr. M’s employment was foreshortened to February 24th, and John Eldridge, the town’s Finance Director, was appointed Interim Mr. Manager. Councilors Pols, Walker, Perreault, Brayman, and Millett voted to modify Brown’s separation agreement, while Watson, Wilson, Favreau, and Richardson were opposed.
We’re trying to figure out who should play the role of Otter in our interim rendition of the meeting; we have someone(s) in mind, but we need to see how he (they) looked in his screen test. The role requires that you be sincere whether you mean it or not, and some are far better at that than others.
"I'm sad, very sad," said at-large Councilor John Richardson during a recess after the vote. "You don't kick a man when he's down. He was scheduled to leave March 31. Certain elements couldn't wait to get rid of him."
So as we said in our earlier summary, Johnny Protocols was unhappy with council protocols. As he often has in the past, he sites ‘certain elements’ as the cause, though this time he left out ‘political agendas.’ The least he could do is specifically name the entries in the periodic table he thinks are at fault. Was it iron? Or magnesium? Or the always incendiary phosphorus?
There were some memorable statements at the meeting, including this one to Brown by Richardson:
"I'm sorry you did your job letting Mr. Favreau and Mr. Watson" know about the meeting with developers."
Or as Dylan Martin reported in the BDN,
Favreau and Watson, who were not invited to Pols’ meeting, were notified by Brown of the meeting about an hour before it happened, and showed up at the meeting before anyone else arrived.
So much for Favreau’s claim that he ‘stumbled’ on the meeting, and Watson’s that he learned of it from Favreau. Perhaps they have bad memories; or maybe it’s that tangled web thing.
Or maybe Johnny Protocols has ‘certain elements’ of the story confused. Which is it?
Councilor Jane Millett got to the point with this comment on the Ostrich story of February 7th, which we parsed at some length in recent posts. In referring to the story, she said:
"This is a tempest in a teapot, the facts contradicted themselves."
In so doing, she vindicated our take on the story, which was irreconcilable on its face.
Councilor Dave Watson added to the melodrama with this:
"I'm really upset and disappointed that Brunswick be put in this situation. We are acting dishonorably with no integrity."
So one more time, Dave - how did you find out about the meeting????
Brown’s farewell sentiment was this:
"The separation agreement began in an effort to avoid what we've gone through in the last few minutes. I want to thank the council for my time here. I think we've got a lot of positive things accomplished. I've made some mistakes, I regret those mistakes. As this community moves forward you have my best wishes. And that'll be it."
Bob Mentzinger, who wrote the conflicted Ostrich story of February 7th, penned a scathing indictment of Councilor Pols in an editorial yesterday. Here’s the really strange thing. The Ostrich has a paid web site policy. They’ll allow you an infrequent free look at an item of your choice, but in so doing, remind you that the web site is a paid affair. Except when they mark certain items with a little red tag saying ‘free access.’ The items we’ve noticed have mostly been grounded in their ideological inclinations.
So we were surprised that Mentzinger, the Ostrich managing editor, has posted the editorial in toto on his personal blog. We wonder what the publisher and others think of that; sounds kind of sketchy to us. Isn’t he circumventing his employer’s web payment policy? Perhaps it’s no big deal; he posts articles from other media outlets in their complete form as well.
His blog, by the way, points out his connections to ‘non-profits’ and ‘political campaigns,’ including that of Cynthia Dill. He includes a number of posts related to that campaign.
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