Category Archives: Perspectives

My Moral Dilemma

Posted on by
Reply

Conservative talk-show host Laura Schlessinger, better known as “Dr. Laura”, liked to ask callers about their “moral dilemmas”. In filling the gap left when our council decided to stop recording and airing presentations of non-agenda speakers at regular meetings, I have encountered one of my own. Over my nearly fifteen years of observing council proceedings here in Portsmouth, I have found that city council members are not loathe to decry grandstanding by citizens, but they are most tolerant of their own attention-seeking behaviors. In fact, the structure of their semimonthly meetings maximizes their opportunities to appear in the limelight. Opening presentations and proclamations, board and commission member anointment, and “Items Submitted by Council Members” all provide “solo performance” opportunities to our elected body. Beyond that, every agenda item provides them the opportunity to opine for as long as they wish, or their colleagues will endure, on the matter at hand.
Continue reading →

(Il)logical Conclusions

Posted on by
Reply

(I endeavor to keep the focus of this site on Portsmouth issues, but I have been working against one very ill-considered provision of the comprehensive transportation funding bill, the hybrid registration surcharge. I know I’m not the only gas/electric fuel automobile owner in Portsmouth, so this issue must have some resonance for at least a few others.)

How about this innovative idea: Since the hybrid surcharge rationale is really based on what the Commonwealth needs to raise in revenue, not actual individual resource use, why not apply the same logic to other taxes. If we need more sales tax revenue, let’s slap an under-consumption fee on those slackers who aren’t buying enough consumer goods to satisfy state revenue needs. How about those low-wage, unemployed, permanently disabled, and retired folks scraping by on meager resources? They’re not contributing their fair share of income taxes, are they? Let’s hit them with an underachiever’s fee. This has so much potential, we should just expand it across the spectrum of fees, taxes, and tolls so we soak up every available dime of discretionary income from everybody. My one misgiving about suggesting this, though, is if a member of the General Assembly runs across it, s/he may not understand this is intended as irony and promote the idea. As we’ve seen on numerous occasions, in Virginia no notions are too crazy to find a patron in our state legislature. (State currency, anyone?)

Non-Agenda Address to City Council

Posted on by
Reply

(The following is a transcription of a non-agenda presentation from retired Portsmouth Fire Captain Robert Turner to City Council and the public at the regular council meeting of January 22, 2013. It appears here with some stylistic and clarifying edits.)

City Manager, City Council, Mayor:

My name is Robert Turner (most of you know me). I’m the President of the Portsmouth Fire and Police Retirement Association, and I have brought three different situations to your attention in the past. [I have met] with Mayor Wright two times and the City Manager once [as well as one conversation] on the phone. Yet, I have not had the first phone call or seen any of the subjects brought up at work sessions or [in] the council meetings. I did get one remark from Councilman Moody suggesting you look again at the discrimination . . . towards approximately seventy retirees (although several have died while waiting for action. . . .) Mayor Wright’s reply is what can we do to fix it at the least cost — where can we compromise. Fix what’s wrong. We constantly hear there is no money, yet we keep seeing you finding some for different projects.

  1. [Those who] retired prior to 1993 were, and still are, paying a premium for their death benefit. Yet those who retired since then, with two to three times the amount of retirement [benefits had] their premium bought out by the city. . . . If that is not discrimination, what is? One person tells me that amounts to fraud!
  2. Those retirees who were working in 1978 were given a booklet for planning and figuring their retirement [which] stated there would be cost of living raises yearly. [In practice], ours doesn’t come close even to Social Security. We don’t pay half taxes and fees, [so] why is our cost of living [adjustment] cut in half compared to [that of] others?
  3. Our retirement system has lost over forty per cent [of its value] in the past seven year even with larger contributions by the city. I recently witnessed one retiree get 120% of his base salary while . . . another received 96.2%. Because of the city or, maybe, Chief Horton failing to replace retirees and giving overtime to small groups of people, [one particular individual received unusually] high compensation and retirement benefits [of] $76,000 for the rest of his life. . . .
  4. I think the city should be looking into the [previous] city manager – Chief Horton situation for wrongful acts. Horton was a buddy . . . brought here by [that] manager and [may not have qualified] to be Chief [under] our published requirements for that position!

I know this is a lot to swallow for our two new council members, but the rest should be aware of everything I have mentioned. I would love to hear some feedback from this. Also, I would be more than glad to discuss this at a work session where there are no gag orders, if I [were] invited!

Thank you for [your] time and, I hope, your consideration concerning this matters.

Practice Makes Perfect?

Posted on by
Reply

Thanks to Portsmouth Taxpayer Alliance President Pat Simons for this bit of information: the City Council Public Work Session on January 22, 2013, did not get recorded. The non-agenda speakers recording exclusion policy does not apply in this instance since at work sessions the public is visible from time to time but never heard. When Ms. Simons inquired as to what became of the recording in question, she learned that someone had failed to inform the contract videographer that the city would need his services for that time slot. Back when Tyrell Ducre was our in-house A/V production department, that would not have happened. I suppose, though, when you have a policy in place of blacking out some portions of public meetings willy-nilly, it might well confuse the hired help.

Non-Agenda Speakers Blackout

Posted on by
1

Image: Citizens Showing Disapproval of Council Policy holding Winnie-the-Pooh characters with mouths taped shut (photo at Pilotonline.com).

Just wanted to let you know, [last night’s] public work session (PWS) was ended (for the public) with a discussion about how the non-agenda speakers will not be aired at city council meetings from tonight on.

The mayor opened the discussion and read a draft of a statement to be made to the public at the council meeting about this, then he opened the floor for comments from other council members. Mr. Moody made a strong argument for continuing to air non-agenda speakers. Ms. Psimas stated that, although she had stated on many occasions her concerns about what was aired, she considered the needs of people who could not attend meetings to be important, too. She also said that the mayor had the gavel and could control speakers who were making personal attacks, etc., to a degree, but that other council members had to back him when he did so (which is undeniably true). She further recommended that the decision to stop airing the public’s comments should be delayed until after tonight’s meeting and the community meeting next week. Mr. Moody agreed that waiting until after the community meeting to make the decision was a good idea and asked for consensus. Unfortunately, other council members–Mr. Cherry, Mr. Edmonds, Mr. Meeks, and Ms. Randall–supported the black-out, so we would have been left in the dark this Tuesday and would be at the community meeting on January 15…
Continue reading →