Mr. Mayor and Honorable Members of City Council:

I had wanted to write this immediately after the last meeting of council, but life got in the way, so better late than never. I appreciate your vigorous pursuit of an answer regarding the failure of the post-2018 municipal waste disposal RFP process to deliver a workable alternative to what SPSA has offered its member communities. You could have taken the easy way out and affirmed the judgment of the city purchasing administrator that neither of the bids was in the best interests of the city. Instead, in the June 14 work session, Council Member Whitaker asked the right questions of Mr. Ammons, and the mayor and council colleagues supported his efforts to obtain an explanation of the purchasing agent’s ruling. Although I do not know what clarification you may have extracted in closed session, I am pleased that you did not let the matter lie. I hope that this upcoming meeting of council will bring additional relevant information into the public realm and facilitate reaching a waste disposal decision that is truly in the best interests of the citizenry. Continue reading →

As I belatedly watched the PBS tribute commemorating the twenty-fifth anniversary of Ken Burns’s documentary, “The Civil War”, one particularly insightful observation struck both a nerve and a chord. Discussing why he found the subject so compelling that he would devote the effort to making an eleven-hour series about it, Burns said, “[Everything] in American history led up to it, and everything since has been a consequence of it. . . . [T]he centrality of the Civil War in our lives, and [how it shaped] the meaning of who we are as Americans [makes this event] the subject in American history.” Continue reading →