In the overall scheme of things, 13.36 seconds is not that great a period of time. It might not seem like that long an interval. But, think about it this way. Suppose you’re in a classroom where a roll call is being taken — just a roll call to determine who is present and who is absent — and when the teacher calls out one particular name, that person waits 13.36 seconds before responding “here.” Get out a stop watch and time it yourself. In a situation like that, 13.36 seconds seems like an eternity.
In fact, at Tuesday night’s city council meeting, City Secretary Jennifer Horn thought 13.36 seconds was such a long time after she called the name of council member Dex Ellison that she called his name a second time just to make sure he knew it was his time to respond. This 13.36 seconds elapsed during the roll call vote on the nomination of Rebecca Chapa to city’s Ethics Commission, the only vote of nine taken Tuesday that appeared to split the council.
I attempted to learn from Ellison exactly what was going through his mind that those 13.36 seconds, but he seemed reluctant to talk about it, telling me early Wednesday he was tied up at work and then later that he had become sidetracked by the failed insurrection that afternoon at the nation’s capital. He was the only council member who did not respond immediately when his name was called. Council members Yvonne Flores-Cale, Chapa’s sponsor, Michael Tobias and Robert Rizzo immediately voted to approve the nomination after their names were called, just as their colleagues — Mayor Travis Mitchell, Mayor Pro Tem Rick Koch and Ashlee Bradshaw — did when voting not to approve it. Only Ellison hesitated and I thought the readers of this article might be as curious as I about that 13.36 second-hesitation before he ultimately cast what turned out to be the deciding vote to approve. Unfortunately, all we have is what’s on the record from the council’s meeting.
“Rebecca is honest and follows good moral standards,” Flores-Cale said in formally placing her nomination before the council. “Rebecca does an excellent job confronting situations with a cool mind and a soft heart. She is the epitome of what an ethical person should look like.”
Mayor Mitchell said he could not support the nomination in large part because of “her comments that were derogatory toward individual council members.”
“This Ethics Committee, in particular, is supposed to be a group of citizens that do not have that reputation,” Mitchell said, adding that a board member “should not be perceived as someone who is overtly political, but rather someone who could take a dispassionate approach, methodically analyzing all conclusions.”
Council member Tobias said regardless of “whatever has happened with councils in the past, it is time to move forward.”
“I commend you for all the things you’ve done for the community,” Bradshaw said. “Unfortunately, I haven’t seen you in that capacity. I’ve only seen you with what you’ve presented at the meetings and I would like to see someone with a little less bias on the Ethics Committee — someone who is able to reach an objective conclusion on the situations at hand.”
Ellison, at first, seemed to be leaning against approving the nomination. He said he had numerous conversations with the nominee and her family — “I have been in their home” — but then made references to reaching out to Chapa in an attempt “to build bridges that I felt weren’t wanted.” He added he felt she was an involved citizen and if she was being nominated to serve on any other committee, he would readily approve her. “I think the Ethics Commission is different, when you think about what the Ethics Commission is charged with doing” in that it is involved only in judging the actions of city staff members and elected officials.
Mitchell responded to Ellison by saying he did not believe Chapa could be fair in dealing with an ethics complaint filed against certain city council members or someone on the city’s staff. “I think this council’s job is bring someone forward who we believe has demonstrated that very fair, calm demeanor and has the reputation of being very fair, apolitical generally speaking, and not demonstrating they have an axe to grind, in particular toward individual members of council and/or staff.”
No comments:
Post a Comment