During last night’s City Council meeting, Mayor Todd Webster was informing the council and others in attendance what transpired at a meeting held Monday to discuss the Interlocal Agreement among Kyle, Mountain City and Hayes County created, at least in part, to make sure a planned residential development had an adequate water supply. And, truth be told, Mayor Webster acquitted himself extremely well at this meeting and Kyle residents can rest assured he represented their best interests at the session. And to be even more honest, he handled himself far better than I might have hjad I been in his place. After enduring close to two hours of constant abuse from the residents of Mountain City, I would have been tempted to simply say "Hey, if you hate this deal so much, fine. I’m going to convince out City Council to rescind the offer and let you solve these issues all by yourself." Yep, Mayor Webster displayed much more patience and far better discipline than a lesser mind might have in that same situation.
However, he finally lost that patience land that discipline last night and at the most inopportune time. He was relating what was being said at this open meeting when suddenly the city attorney popped up and said they had to take this discussion into executive session.
Whaaat??? The subject being discussed was an open, public meeting. The subject of that meeting is a public document — so public the city posted it as part of its supplemental material to last night’s agenda. How in heaven’s name could anyone possibly conceive a discussion on this subject had to be held in secret, that it was not for public consumption?
I posed that exact question to Mayor Webster and he snapped back at me "Because I decided to do so." Not because it was the right thing to do, because it so obviously wasn’t. Not because it was legal, because it doesn’t come close to meeting the restrictions of the Texas Open Meetings Act. The reason was just "Because I decided to do so."
And the rest of the council meekly acquiesced to this totalitarianism. Like lambs to the slaughter.
I could attribute the mayor’s action to a delayed reaction to the events that transpired the night before. I could, but I won’t, because that would mean excusing the wrong-headed actions of any political leader simply because he or she didn’t get a good sleep the night before. He didn’t just snap at me, he snapped at everyone who lives here.
Anyone who has followed my rumblings and rants for any length of time knows that I’m a relative newcomer to Kyle and the first thing I noticed when I got here was the complete lack of involvement in municipal affairs by residents of the city and the ridiculously low voter turnout numbers in municipal elections, compared to other places I have lived and worked. Others even asked me to try to explain the citizens’ laissez faire attitude and I couldn’t.
But now I’m beginning to understand. The citizens realize the fix is in, the system is rigged, it has become corrupted. They have come to know that they are going to be excluded not only from the process of government, but from the discussion of that process. That this is a government designed only to protect and further the interests of developers at the expense of individual citizens. That this is a government that operates under the simple rule that it takes action, not because it’s in the public interest, but because the mayor, by his own admission, "decided to do so."
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