Before an election, candidates tend to play it safe, and refrain from saying anything silly. Most of their positions and comments are ‘vanilla’ in nature. After the election, the winners tend to disengage the ‘think-before-you-speak’ option and make some silly comments as did re-elected councilwoman Patty Gustin during the last council meeting.
The agenda item pertained to an ordinance involving tattoo businesses. Watch and listen as Gustin shares an intense bit of wisdom from personal experience:
Wow, that clarified the issue.
Later, on the same subject, she again added a gem of wisdom:
Again, a brilliant observation by Gustin, “anybody can sue anybody for anything” including the city getting sued by anybody for anything. After the comment, council members squirmed in unison, in their seats. Just what city officials want to broadcast, ‘anybody can sue the city’.
The winning comment for the night, and maybe for the year, if not the decade, came from, of all people, councilman Benny White. Keep in mind, that since White’s election, he has been very careful not to take a misstep, by saying something foolish. However, on this night, White surpassed the demarcation line of silly and foolish, and entered the arena of idiotic and stupid when he made a request to a presenter from North Central College.
The agenda item had to do with the rezoning of property from Little Friends to North Central College (NCC). There were concerns from residents and some council members as to what the college was going to do with the property. NCC did not want to commit to any specific plan until they knew rezoning would occur. It turned into a tug-of-war between ‘tell us the plan’ before we approve rezoning, vs. “approve the rezoning before we tell you the plan”, at which point council Benny White came up with this brilliant request to the NCC presenter:
Imagine what is running thru the mind of the NCC presenter when he hears the request, “what are you not going to be putting there”. He’s probably thinking, “are you kidding me”.
It might be too harsh to say that White’s comment and request was idiotic and stupid, but I can’t think of two better words. I’m sure when the list of things not going to be put there is submitted to the council, it could be rather extensive. It would probably include:
- No explosive testing
- No uranium-enrichment facility
- No heliport
- No theme park
- No airport runway
- No hazmat storage facility
- No ribfest parking lot
- No beehives the size of Buicks
- No Walmart
- No puppy mill
- No drive-in movie theatre
- No kissing booth (maybe)
The list could be endless. However if White wants the list, that is what he shall get. Local officials always get what they want. What they don’t want is an unending list of video clips showing silly (and yes stupid) things they have done or said.
Did not attend or watch last city council meeting. Did read Coyne’s post about removing the licensed medical requirement for tattoo shops. In short he said that removing this requirement was the right thing to do since tattoo are more mainstream and socially acceptable today.
This is basically an admission that the requirement for a licensed medical professional was not about public health but acceptable community standards. In short saying it is okay for city officials to mislead residents about the important facts (in this case medical needs for tattooing) of and issue to insure socially unacceptable element are keep out of the community.