Mayor Huether recused himself from the discussion and vote on the Indoor Tennis facility last night, to avoid a conflict of interest. He also will not be signing the contract.
The fact is that it doesn’t really matter. We will get to that in a moment.
Councilor Staggers was the lone ‘NO’ vote on the contract last night;
. . . but Kermit Staggers cast the lone no vote on the tennis contract. He questioned whether there are enough tennis players in the area to support such a facility.
Even if the council would not have approved the contract last night, they have already approved the expenditure in the CIP budget earlier in the year. This was just a contract approval, not an ‘allocation’ approval.
And that is the gist of Huether’s conflict. Who prepares the CIP budget and presents it to the city council for approval? THE MAYOR! By budgeting the money for the tennis facility in the CIP budget, the mayor performed his conflict already. His ‘non’ performance last night was just smoke and mirrors.