Council’s history of disappointments

Council’s history of disappointments

To the editor:
    The City Council meeting with the Planning Board on March 23, regarding the bypass issue was another disappointment in the Council’s mostly uninterrupted history of disappointments. The public was “allowed” to attend, and it was given out that LEAD member(s) would be at the table. We assumed LEAD would be someone not also a Council member. 

    When attendees entered the room, the tone of the meeting was apparent: the table was placed so that the audience could see little and hear less of the exchanges among Council and Board members. LEAD was sidelined and not invited to contribute. It was hardly a meeting that offered transparency to the public the Council serves.
    The bypass is an important matter with costs and consequences reaching beyond Presque Isle. The public has demonstrated it wants Main Street truck traffic diminished, but it does not favor a 10-mile bypass. The Planning Board’s promotion of an easterly connector to alleviate Main Street’s truck problems seemed to have been construed by the Council as endorsement of the bypass.
    Having divested itself of a city manager with which it did not agree, the City Council is a body that bears scrutiny and accountability by the citizens of Presque Isle. Interim appointments are sometimes needed, but citizens ought to count the members of the City Council whose seats originated as appointment, not election. Because the general population is rarely motivated to seek public office, seats often are “won” unopposed by candidates who were first appointed. It is our hope that those individuals who applied for the last Council appointment follow through and run for election in the next vote, and the next, giving voters actual choices. Presque Isle needs a city council of elected not appointed decision-makers.
    It is also our hope that folks take the time to attend Council meetings. More than ever, governmental decision-making needs to be done in the sunshine, not in darkness or dim light that obscures what is going on. Only public pressure will make that happen.