How many jobs do you know that have no ‘job description’? It seems that every job has some type of description; something defining what the goal or purpose is, or what is expected and what are the priorities. Yet if you’re a Naperville city council member there isn’t any. Yes there is a short ‘official oath’ that in part states “I will support the Constitution of the United States, the Constitution of the State of Illinois, and that I will faithfully discharge the duties of the office of city council member according to the best of my ability.” Does anybody, including the council members, know what the ‘duties’ are? And what about ‘to the best of my ability’. What if the council member has little if any ‘ability’. With no obvious ability, he or she may be doing the ‘best’ they can, but it’s certainly not good enough.
All good citizens ‘support the Constitution of the United States’ and ‘the Constitution of the State of Illinois’ so the ‘official oath’ sounds good, but basically it’s all bread with no meat. If we had to come up with a job description list of 20 things council members like to do it might look like this:
- ribbon cutting with a four-foot scissors
- pounding the gavel during meetings
- talking endlessly about anything
- campaigning for election
- campaigning for re-election
- raising funds for re-election
- preparing victory speeches
- smiling for pictures
- embarrassing residents during Public Forum
- seeing ‘Joe the hot dog guy’ as a human pinata
- starting city council meetings late
- determining how many chickens someone can have
- appearing at fun events
- trying to pronounce big words
- dancing to the City Manager’s music
- selling out to the Federal Department of Energy
- spending tax dollars
- spending more tax dollars
- creating more taxes and fines
- finding ways to spend those dollars
If you created a basic list of what residents would like council members to do, it might include the following:
- stay awake during meetings
- pay attention and be respectful to speakers
- use common sense
- work with residents rather than against them
- support citizens’ right to vote (specifically Smart Meters)
- encourage win/win situations
- spend less and spend wisely
- have the courage and integrity to admit your wrong
- keep an open mind
- base decisions on all available information
Sounds simple and reasonable, doesn’t it. But apparently simple and reasonable are not part of the job description.
Maybe this would be helpful… http://library.municode.com/HTML/14853/level2/TIT1AD_CH5MACO.html#TIT1AD_CH5MACO_1-5-1POFU
What the code says vs. what the councilmembers do are (more often than not) two different things.
Seems like a regular occurance that the Code, municipal, state or federal, is not followed or flat-out violated.
“There is no “We the People” until “I the Person” is willing to stand up and speak for himself or herself. For the future to change, the individual must change. When enough individuals change, everything changes.” Gerald Celente
Its my opinion that the City of Naperville deprived the residents of Naperville of their civil rights to petition THEIR government, and have the opportunity to vote on a non-binding referendum on the meter issue. The Naperville electoral board violated the state’s Open Meetings Act three times, according to the Illinois Attorney Generals office. The members of the so called, “quasi-judicial” (whatever that means) board was the epitome of conflcit of interest, and members should have recused themselves from participating.
Now it appears that some council members are trying to overturn the voter mandate demanding district representation.
Wake up before the spending, taxing and property right confiscation drives this once great city into unmanageable deficits and Agenda 21 international controlled hell.