At the June Council meeting, there was a public hearing on a proposal to install stop signs at the intersection of 5th and Main Streets. This has been an intersection where there have been several accidents and close calls. There were no objections raised at the public hearing and one member of the public spoke in favor of the proposal. The resolution to install the signs was approved by the council with three council members, Dick Shepherd, Larry Harding and Jim Durst, voting in favor of the proposal and one council member, Dwight Lobberecht, voting against it.
Three months later, at the September council meeting, Councilman Shepherd, who is on the safety committee and who had strongly recommended that the council approve the installation of the stop signs, asked why the signs were not in place. There was a pregnant pause in the meeting; the city clerk glanced at the Mayor and then at Councilman Lobberecht; and finally the silence was broken when the city clerk replied that the matter was under review by the city attorney. But no one on the council even questioned why it should be under legal review. Perhaps the public would have been interested in an explanation, but if the council is not concerned why should the public be concerned? Now, two months later, there are still no stop signs at the intersection of 5th and Main Streets, and there has been no word from city hall as to what happened to the signs. Could it be that the stop signs disappeared in one of the dark back rooms in city hall and no one can find them; or maybe they are hidden in that special interrogation room that the council set aside for the police department? Oh, that’s right, the police department, itself, has disappeared. Hmmm, where did the signs go?
When we see a magician perform magic coin tricks, we know that the coins really do not disappear – it is just an illusion. We do not see the palming of the coin because the magician directs our attention elsewhere. So it is with the council’s resolution on the stop signs which was passed last June, it was an illusion because the resolution never did pass and therefore the stop signs never did exist. But like all true magicians, the Mayor (John Johnston) and his assistant, Vice Mayor (Dwight Lobberecht) and the keeper of the magic wand, the city clerk (Mickey Solano), will not reveal how they pulled off this magic trick. Instead they use the old legal ruse to misdirect our attention so they will not have to reveal the true hidden secret.
Since I do not belong to the magicians’ union, I am going to let the rabbit out of the hat, turn on the bright lights (magicians like to work in dim light) and reveal the secret behind the illusion. However, when a magic trick is revealed, we are usually disappointed because the trick seems to be so simple. But first you need to have some background and I apologize, ahead of time, for all the detailed information you will need to know to understand exactly what took place. Initially, the issue came to the council’s attention at its April meeting when a citizen requested the installation of stop signs at the intersection of 5th and Main Streets to prevent accidents. The matter was assigned to the Safety Committee for review and to make a recommendation to the council. At the May meeting, the safety committee strongly recommended going ahead with the stop signs.
There is a city ordinance which lists all the locations of stop signs in town. If the council decides to approve additional stop signs or make any changes in the locations of stop signs, it has to approve an amendment to the existing ordinance. To amend an ordinance requires a public hearing to allow for citizens’ comments; there has to be three readings of the proposal which is written in the form of a resolution and the readings have to be on separate days; and there has to be a minimum of three affirmative votes of the council members, at each reading, to pass the resolution. There is also a provision in a state statute which allows the council to suspend the requirement for the second and third readings, but any such motion has to be approved by three-fourths of “all of the members of the council.” Since the full council consists of five members, then a three-fourths vote would require a minimum of four votes.
A public hearing was held at the council’s June meeting. After the hearing, a motion was made to approve a resolution to amend the ordinance on stop signs to include the installation of stop signs on 5th and Main Streets. The first reading of the resolution was approved by the following votes of the council members: AYE: Shepherd, Durst, Harding; NAY: Lobberecht. Then, a motion was made to suspend the requirement for second and third readings. The vote was the same, three ayes and one nay. According to the minutes of this meeting, the motion/resolution passed. But, as I have just explained, above, the motion to suspend the readings actually failed because there were not four affirmative votes to support the motion.
Now that we are past the details, it gets more interesting. The stop sign issue just disappears, never to be discussed again in public. Poof! – Smoke and mirrors and a legal ruse. And another Poof! – As a council member who had mysteriously vanished from the council for three months suddenly reappears. (To be continued).