Unfortunately I was not at the 10/22/18 city council
meeting. I was attending the Citizen’s Fire Academy. But, I do have eyes
and have read the minutes of that meeting.
There was an item on the agenda which concerned spending
funds for some of the preliminary work for the proposed community center.
Councilmember Stephanie Meyer went on a diatribe about how the city was
spending funds for public safety, infrastructure, and other items and the city
should be looking forward to spending money on and putting in this new
community center.
She inferred how she was in favor of increasing PD staffing
and the new Fire Station when those items originally came up. What she
didn’t tell folks was that when the question of funding came up she voted
against it. Yep, she voted against a mill levy increase for public safety
to pay for the additional officers and firemen, the station, and truck but
wants to push for a Taj Mahal type structure for the west side. This
gives Meyer the ability to pander to folks on both sides of the question.
Does she think that there are folks that don’t see her duplicity for what it
is? That her 'support' is only political and not practical? Those items she
'voted' for could not have been in the budget to vote on without the funding.
She supports a mill levy increase for an amenity but not for
public safety. So, if she mouths off about being in favor of public safety
projects but doesn’t vote to support them financially, I would strongly
recommend that the next time she wants to talk out of both sides of her mouth
that she go to Cabela’s and purchase some hip waders for those sitting in the
audience. Especially since Fire Station 74 is for Ward III and that area of town was seeing unreasonable response times for emergency calls (fire and health).
BTW, there are still many, many areas of Shawnee that need
infrastructure upgrades to include streets, sidewalks, storm sewers etc. that
all this community center money could be better spent on.
