VIEWER WARNING: This piece is bound to really irritate some people. I'm well aware of the anger this will illicit, and your expected complaints have been considered. I try to be constructive when I criticize, but sometimes it's nearly impossible. This is such a case. In the interest of completeness, and sharing this continuing story, I submit the following:
So far, I've reported on
Firestone's Trustee Board meeting, now it's
Longmont's turn. Unfortunately, there wasn't a whole lot said about Firestone's comments, but I suspect there will be as Firestone just approved the
Firelight Park annexation.
But there was this...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZnG9kXAsnk
In it, Longmont City Councilmember
Sean McCoy rips into Firestone's Mayor
Mike Simone over his comment "
LifeBridge was forced to "walk away" by the election of an anti-religious faction to the LongmontCity Council". He also took offense to the "
immoral" description of Longmont made by Trustee
Steve Curtis. He said he found it "
very unethical on this individuals part", meaning Mayor Simone. He basically threatened a
lawsuit for slander.
Where to begin.
I've been to ONE
Firestone board meeting, and I'm not an elected official or anything, but even I know that they are a
Board of Trustee's, NOT a
City Council. Members are called
Trustee's, NOT
Councilmembers. I'm starting to agree with
several people who have mentioned to me this constant habit of
getting peoples names wrong (and I guess
titles now) and how it shows a total
lack of respect. In this case, it's Firestone's leaders. In other cases, well, you listen for it yourself.
Next, Mr. McCoy's complaining of "
inflammatory" comments. Some of us about fell out of our chairs on this one. This is the same guy who called people he disagreed with (we're talking citizens here, not elected officials) "
the lunatic fringe". He also said in the same breath how Longmont shouldn't talk "
smack" about Boulder, yet it's alright for
Longmont to do that to
Firestone? Watch the
1/29/08 video again (
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OEo7ZF3eKYU) and replace
Boulder with
Longmont, and
Longmont with
Firestone in the appropriate places and context. I know some of you hate it when I point out
total hypocrisy like this, but it speaks for itself here.
Then this outrage over the "
anti-religious" comment. Here's the problem: On
1/8/08(
http://denver.yourhub.com/Longmont/Blogs/News-Politics/Commentary/Blog~412831.aspx), Mr. McCoy made the point of his detachment from the
Lifebridge issue as he said he and the other new members of council didn't
vote on Lifebridge. So in essence, he's saying the new council had
nothing to do with what happened to Lifebridge. If that's the case, then why would he take offense to Mayor Simone's inference that an anti-religious faction was to blame when
THEY HADN'T EVEN BEEN ELECTED YET AND OBVIOUSLY COULDN'T VOTE ON IT, as Mr. McCoy himself made clear as his closing point on
1/8/08?
Mr. McCoy tried to make the case that other factors caused Lifebridge to pull out (remember the "
600% of Longmont residents" nonsense?). He must not have believed that nonsense himself, most people I know didn't buy it, and obviously the
Firestone Board of Trustee's didn't swallow that line either. His anger over this comment revealed that his
1/8/08 comments were a whitewash, otherwise why would this sting so much?
To be fair, is it possible Mr. McCoy was truly outraged over being called "
anti-religious"
? Absolutely. I assume most public officials are concerned with the image they put out. They wouldn't want to be publicly called "
anti-religious", true or not, for fear of alienating over half of their constituents. Then again, insulting constituents is getting to be a regular occurrence for Mr. McCoy. Let's now add
leaders from other cities and
the press to the list, the same press (
Times-Call) he bought ad space from during his campaign. Very consistent and principled, not.
What's the point of all this? I know I won't be popular holding these officials accountable
in this fashion when it needs to be done, and
I find no joy in doing it. But these are our elected representatives. They should avoid embarrassing themselves,
and the rest of us, and I'm hoping they might
look at and
listen to themselves, and learn from it in the future. And you wonder why so many people (not just in Longmont) are
apathetic to the issues and these officials? I'm trying to get
more people involved,
this doesn't help.
©2008 Chris Rodriguez/Wrongmont.Com
(Chris Rodriguez is a Longmont resident, and the editor and publisher of Wrongmont.Com, a community website that raises local issues to increase public awareness and interest)