In our representative form of government,
people are elected to public office so they can take care of the
people's business. While these representatives will not always
agree on methods, they should at least attempt to open debate and
full honest disclosure of each issue presented. This logical
approach to government of the people comes to a halt when our
elected officials take it upon themselves to decide what information
the public should have.
During the April 6 Kenai Peninsula Borough
Assembly meeting, Mayor Bagley chose once again NOT to provide
requested information. It had to do with item #4 of the
Mayor's report to the assembly. This item was the approval of
a contract with Integrity Survey for surveying and platting KPB land
in the Kalifornsky area, which in his capacity as mayor, Mr. Bagley
should be familiar with. You can
hear the
exchange between Mayor Bagley, Assemblyman Sprague and Assemblywoman
Glick
(Note: if you wish to download a copy, right click and select "save
as" from the menu. This will put a copy on your hard disc for
future playback), and decide for yourself if this is
proper open and honest debate by duly elected officials or a temper
tantrum more commonly associated with a spoiled child.
It is time for us
to consider changing the current form of Borough government to a
professional administrator. This has already been done in Soldotna,
and the MatSu Borough. Our borough could still have an elected, but
unpaid Mayor for ceremonial purposes. A professional administrator
would be REQUIRED to give straight answers to questions posed by our
elected Borough Officials.
If we change to a
municipal administrator form of government, the assembly could
demand candidates have appropriate education, credentials and
practical experience. An administrator could take care of the
people’s business, while providing the efficiencies in government
that our Peninsula citizens need and deserve. Furthermore, the
Assembly could fire an insubordinate administrator that refused to
answer their legitimate questions.
The benefit of this change could save
taxpayers millions in wasted government spending each year.
NOTE: This 4 minute and 38 second audio clip
is a 4 MB mp3 file which should download in under 15 minutes with a
dial up connection, and
play on Winamp, Windows Media Player, and many other media players.
http://www.akvoters.org/Boo-Hoo_Mayor.mp3
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