Councilors Neitzert, Starr and Stehly will be attending the conference this year next week. I think they will bring back a wealth of great information we can grow on in our city. Hopefully they won’t ’embarrass’ us 🙂
This past Tuesday, 4 city councilors decided to attend election parties of their designated parties. Not that there is anything wrong with that. Selberg, Erickson and Neitzert attended the GOP bash while Pat Starr made his way to the weeping room at DEM party headquarters. Starr opted out of speaking at their shin-digs, but Neitzert and Selberg made a brief statements and Erickson was the emcee at the GOP event. Like I said, nothing wrong with supporting your party even if you serve on the council as a supposed non-partisan. But I wondered why councilor Stehly did not attend the GOP event after being invited by Erickson.
Stehly told me she believed in staying non-partisan as a councilor, though she belongs to the Republican party and believes in a lot of their values, “Hey, I represent Republicans as well as Democrats and Independents on the city council. I don’t need to get myself tied up in party politics. We need to care about others and treat them with respect no matter what political party they belong to.”
 
While I understand the argument of singling out individual businesses, (FFL 1:20:30) I believe these councilors had a right to take a personal look at a business that is making oodles of money while using tax dollars on a high number of police calls. And for disclosure, besides the three councilors, there were 4 citizens present watching what was going on. Since the license renewal did pass 7-1, this was more of a warning to Wiley’s that we are watching. I also found it strange that Erickson didn’t have an issue with the police calls, but just a few short months ago she took them to task over smoking violations. Ironically, I checked out that situation Friday night. What Wiley’s essentially has is a smoking room with it’s own bar and very large doors that open up to an outside heated patio. Basically a 4-season room for smokers.
I am very proud them taking a stand, especially Pat and Greg for standing up to the mayor and councilor Erpenbach. If anyone should be embarrassed, it should be her.
Theresa touched on Gavel-Gate, City Attorneys, Smoking Ban and Solar speed signs. Surprisingly no one called in and called her ‘Councilor High Crime’. Podcast should be up early afternoon.