{"id":1725,"date":"2012-07-26T15:56:54","date_gmt":"2012-07-26T19:56:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/?p=1725"},"modified":"2012-07-26T20:46:29","modified_gmt":"2012-07-27T00:46:29","slug":"council-members-owe-a-spate-of-apologies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/?p=1725","title":{"rendered":"Council members owe a spate of apologies"},"content":{"rendered":"

Meeting heaped insults on former D.A., police, a motorcycle club, even the Council president<\/span><\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

By Kathleen Brady Shea<\/strong>,<\/span> Managing Editor, The Times\u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Say what you will about\u00a0 Joseph W. Carroll \u2013 and plenty of folks did at last night\u2019s embarrassing City Council meeting –\u00a0 the former District Attorney has never wavered in his commitment to Coatesville.<\/p>\n

He appeared at the meeting because he had offered his services at a bargain rate to the city as either interim manager, public-safety chief, or both, and he was listed on the agenda for a vote on the public-safety role.<\/p>\n

Last week, Council members interviewed four candidates for what they had decided would be a temporary police leadership position to avoid rushing a decision. Only one \u2013 former Police Chief Dominick P. Bellizzie \u2013 brought the credentials and regional respect needed for a permanent chief, and he was understandably not interested in being a fill-in. That should have made the stopgap selection of Carroll \u2013 the only one with no long-term ambitions \u2013 a no-brainer.<\/p>\n

But instead of sending a supportive message to the beleaguered, understaffed Police Department that public safety is a priority, the Council punted, voting to remove the item from the agenda. The stated reason:\u00a0 Carroll, the former highest-ranking, law-enforcement official in the county, lacked the proper qualifications.<\/p>\n

The vote added insult to the hard-working officers tired of being stretched thin and weary of the unresolved sex scandals hanging over the force. But dedicated police officers were not the only ones abused. A posse of citizens\u00a0 showcased their ignorance of the law by presenting a litany of complaints against\u00a0 Carroll, blaming him for everything from the high rate of incarcerated blacks to the light sentence one of the city\u2019s infamous arsonists received.<\/p>\n

At the very least, Council owes Carroll \u2014 and the police officers who haven\u2019t had inappropriate sex with anyone and continue to do their jobs under adverse circumstance \u2013 profuse apologies. But they are not alone.<\/p>\n

The Elite Motorcycle Club should get a mea culpa, too. They appeared more than a month ago before Council and received a standing ovation for raising $1,055 to help residents displaced by a June 6 rowhouse fire. Former Councilwoman Patsy Ray told Council last night that the victims never got a dime.\u00a0 Kirby Hudson, the city\u2019s acting city manager, offered an explanation. (Later in the meeting, he was promoted\u00a0 to the permanent position \u2014 after Council voted to remove the residency requirement since he lives in Delaware.)<\/p>\n

Hudson described a bizarre \u201chot-potato\u201d exercise in which he tried and failed to get other entities, including the county, to disperse the money. When that failed, he said he put the check in the safe and forgot about it. His remedy: Return the check to the club and let them deal with it, begging questions about why it was ever accepted, especially with such fanfare.<\/p>\n

One of the night\u2019s culminating indignities targeted Council President Ed Simpson, who asked whether anyone had other business and was blindsided\u00a0 by Councilman David C. Collins, who introduced an 11th-hour motion to remove Simpson as president, citing his lack of leadership. The coup attempt by Collins, Councilwoman C. Arvilla Hunt and Councilman Jarrell Brazzle failed, but all three issued closing statements that can be charitably described as misguided.<\/p>\n

Brazzle delivered a self-serving rant on the difficulties of being on Council. The position not only gives him headaches at meetings and sleepless nights, but it even cost him a girlfriend. Perhaps he should put himself \u2013 and the city \u2013 out of his misery.<\/p>\n

Hunt was the only one to acknowledge that Carroll, who sat quietly during the diatribes, had not exactly been rewarded for his generosity. She said she thought he could play a role in the city. \u201cI just didn\u2019t think it was in that position,\u201d she said. She echoed Brazzle\u2019s comments on the angst of public service, adding: \u201cWe can disagree, but we don\u2019t have to be disagreeable.\u201d How would she characterize the Simpson ambush?<\/p>\n

Collins continued the theme, insisting that he \u201cwill not compromise\u201d his Christian values, words that rang a bit hollow after actions that came across as unflatteringly un-Christian.\u00a0 If, as he stated, Collins had concerns about Simpson\u2019s leadership, he had an opportunity to share them at the group\u2019s executive session. He also had the authority to request that the issue be placed on the agenda in advance, thus giving Simpson some warning.<\/p>\n

To be fair, this group has shown substantially more promise than some previous ones. Of course, the bar is rather low when one group had heated arguments about prayer, and one former Councilman preached eloquently on harmony and kept a loaded gun on his refrigerator.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s not too late to make amends. Here\u2019s hoping the apologies begin quickly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Meeting heaped insults on former D.A., police, a motorcycle club, even the Council president By Kathleen Brady Shea, Managing Editor, The Times\u00a0 Say what you will about\u00a0 Joseph W. Carroll \u2013 and plenty of folks did at last night\u2019s embarrassing City Council meeting –\u00a0 the former District Attorney has never wavered in his commitment to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":1730,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[112,3],"tags":[126,560,24,473,436,186],"class_list":["post-1725","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-columns","category-featured","tag-city-council","tag-city-manager","tag-coatesville","tag-joseph-w-carroll","tag-kirby-hudson","tag-police"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1725","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1725"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1725\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1730"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1725"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1725"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1725"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}