Paul Walden, Addison City Council, Post (Facebook)
November 11, 2016
This past Council meeting we considered appointments to the Planning & Zoning Commission as well as the Board of Zoning and Adjustment. What should have been a routine exercise in allowing Council members to nominate and have appointed citizens that had expressed an interest in serving on these two Boards, unfortunately, once again was turned into a political circus by the Mayor and his loyal follower Council member Dale Wilcox.
The system, set up by the Mayor and his formerly controlled Council, aligned the terms of both Boards to match those of the Council. Now this favored quite nicely the Mayor’s desire to exert control over these Boards by appointing individuals sympathetic to his politics. However this past Council election all the incumbent candidates, all supported by the mayor and beholden to him, lost.
Not surprisingly the Mayor (and his loyal follower Dale Wilcox), were not going to be supportive of any new faces on either of these Boards that would represent truly independent thinkers not politically beholden to the Mayor. Much ado about a process they feel was flawed simply because new members were nominated (under the system the Mayor set up).
As is typical with the Mayor, not all the facts were presented in the discussion. If you view the tape, you will hear an objection by Mayor Pro Tem Bruce Arfsten on how his nomination last year was not allowed (I presume for purely political reasons) and discussed in an Executive Session so no one could hear the real reasons the other member of the Mayor’s formerly controlled Council refused to appoint her.
So now the Council has changed into a body of truly independent thinkers, not politically beholden to the Mayor and he does not like it. He refuses to accept the will of the people as expressed in the last election and persists in creating friction and ill will when it serves no useful purpose.
It was also very apparent that the Mayor remains obsessed with discrediting former City Manager (and now private citizen) Ron Whitehead. I listened as he read from 6-7 typed pages of prepared comments that droned on and on as to how he holds himself up as the savior of the Town since his election as Mayor in 2011. Like anyone I am sure that if Ron had it to do all over again there would be things he would change in how he managed our Town over his 32-year tenure, but there is a reason we all chose to move to Addison and call this our home. Ron Whitehead deserves the lion’s share of the credit for making Addison what it is today, not the Mayor or any other politician.
I can only speculate as to his motives as the Mayor persists in his shameless self-promotion and mean spirited, baseless attacks on the former City Manager. I believe those attacks are below the dignity of the office of the Mayor of Addison.