In today’s Tribune, County Reporter Kyle Lowry writes:
The Floyd County Board of Commissioners is no closer to making a recommendation to the County Council on the Scribner Place downtown revitalization project following a public hearing at the council's meeting last week.
County Commissioners John Reisert and Steve Bush attended the public hearing.
"I was very disappointed with citizen response," Reisert said. "We had people who spoke in favor of it but they were all hired guns.”
Hired guns?
All of them?
Of the twelve citizens who rose to speak for the Scribner Place project at last week’s meeting, one was Steve Bush, Reisert’s fellow commissioner.
Is he a "hired gun"?
Of the remaining eleven, a case can be made that six have some degree of professional interest in the project’s completion: Maury Goldberg, Bill Koehler, the director of LifeSpan Resources (I didn’t get her name), Jane Alcorn of DNA, Mike Ricke, and John Rosenbarger.
But does having a professional interest mean they're "hired guns"?
The five others speaking in favor of the project were Randy Smith, Curtis Peters, Jennifer (sorry, didn’t catch her last name), Greg Roberts and Ruthanne Wolfe.
Perhaps Commissioner Reisert can explain the creative sense in which these five residents are “hired guns"?
Is he implying that they were paid to speak?
Although Commissioner Reisert has as much right to utter unintelligible drivel as councilmen Dan Coffey and Steve Price, he’s plainly wrong to insinuate that proponents of the Scribner Place project are mercenaries.
Reisert doesn't neglect the other side of the ledger:
"We had people who spoke against it, but those are the people who speak against anything."
NA Confidential will leave it to David Huckleberry, Carol Lamb, George Mouser and Susan Johnson to defend themselves against this Reisertian nugget of … accuracy?
Public hearing sheds no light on Scribner Place, by Kyle Lowry, Tribune Staff Reporter.
Hey, Rog!
ReplyDeleteI'm pretty sure the comments were in regard to last night's meeting of the Commission, not last week's Council meeting.
What puzzles me is that, if I recall correctly, all three of the commissioners were sitting on the front row of that meeting and clearly saw the public comment and support for Scribner Place and a county commitment.
Read it again.
ReplyDeleteThe quoted paragraph clearly refers to last week's meeting, then later a reference to yesterday's meeting notes that "no one" spoke on the project yesterday.
I don't believe Chuck Freiberger was at last week's council hearing.
You're right, of course.
ReplyDeleteThere's a subtext here, I'm sure. Anyone who was at the meeting could only have come away with a feeling that the crowd was strongly in support of Scribner Place and the county coming on board.
So, what's with this talk of hired guns. The public assumes and has always assumed it was going to happen and they really don't have any idea that it was ever at risk.
And apparently, the elected officials have no idea how strong the support is.
If I'm a hired gun, I'd sure like to see my payoff. I thought we tried to be civilized. I thought we didn't need to overwhelm the public hearing.
As you know, if it was numbers they wanted, we could turn out 50 people to line up and give strong support. Instead, each segment of interest chose a spokesperson.
Showing an interest in civic activities doesn't make one a hired gun. Maury Goldberg is serving on DNA's board this year; Mike Ricke is volunteering as campaign co-chair for the YMCA fund raising; Jane spoke for the DNA volunteer board members.
Are the commissioners asking for a day-long parade of testimonials? I don't think the council would have appreciated that at all.