Council should focus on issues

The News Virginian
Published: July 8, 2008

The thud heard Monday night in City Hall was the collapse of another intrigue, this one involving the perceived intentions of conservatives on the Waynesboro City Council regarding the revived Finance Committee. Enmity between the factions remains, like carbon dioxide emissions, measurable in metric tons. The Earth might or might not be warming, but some relations are frigid and some sensibilities frozen, comically so.

Mayor Tim Williams announced that he had selected Councilwoman Lorie Smith to serve on the finance panel along with him and Vice Mayor Frank Lucente. Smith’s addition to the committee would complete a rudimentary mathematical sum, bringing to three the number of council members on the committee and thereby the committee itself into compliance with city code.

Voices in the blogosphere had been murmuring in the tatter of keyboards that the conservative bloc had endeavored to subvert open meetings law along with city regulations in reforming the Finance Committee a week ago with only Williams and Lucente as members. Williams said the failure to include the mandatory third council members was an oversight. Whom to believe? Who cares? The committee has no more power to act than does the night custodian, whose work will likely prove significantly more evident.

Smith’s inclusion on the committee is interesting for what it might represent. She is regarded as the more pragmatic and amenable of the two who compose the council’s new minority. This, in part, explains her selection rather than her council ally, Nancy Dowdy, or the third member of the council’s majority trio, newly elected Bruce Allen. The former is slipping further into the political frontier once occupied by Lucente; the latter only would stir anew cries of shameless partisanship.

Undaunted, Dowdy condescends, explaining this way the necessity of finding a qualified city attorney: “We have a very inexperienced mayor and vice mayor and I don’t think they are familiar with protocol.”

Well. Former Councilman Tom Reynolds served two terms, the last as mayor. Williams just began his second term as mayor. This is what some call a push. Lucente has served several years after being appointed and then winning election in May. Dowdy is the veteran of the council, having first been elected in 2002. Neither of the two top offices carries palatable heft beyond mere title. So heroics from a city attorney to circumvent the hazards of inexperience hardly seem necessary.

We do not subscribe to a notion of politics fashioned after Rodney King’s plea for all to “just get along.” Dowdy never has been the sort to refrain from an occasional squashing of toes, and we do not call for her to behave otherwise now. Voices of dissent provide clarity that sometimes vanishes in the mist of lock-step harmony in an elected body.

But the time has arrived for Dowdy and others to sweep aside the residue of bitterness over the results of the spring election. Opposition driven by clashes in philosophy rather than personalities is a healthy and necessary function of democracy. Let Dowdy and backers of the minority cry from the rooftops over issues of genuine significance, starting with stormwater.

Let them also leave aside petty potshots and speculation over ulterior aims of meaningless effect. They and the city have better to do with their time.