Despite loud opposition from incumbent Councilmembers Bill Boyer and Steve Voss, new Mayor Richard Lawrence and new Councilmembers Robert DeRoche Jr. and Heidi Moegerle had the 3-2 majority they needed to make drastic city policy changes.
The new council put the city administrator on 30 days paid administrative leave, terminated the staff member who served as the assistant city administrator and human resources director, appointed a new city attorney firm and put a hold on any expenditures having to do with the sewer and water project and the Booster Park-Cedar Creek Trail.
David Schaaf, who was an adviser for the new mayor and two new councilmembers, was appointed as the interim city administrator on a 3-2 vote. Schaaf has no city administrative experience, but has been an elected mayor, city council member and state senator.
“This is an outrage,” Councilmember Bill Boyer said during the council meeting. “This is taking the city back to cigar smoking days in the back dens. It’s an insult to the people of the city of East Bethel.”
That's the opening of the news report - setting the stage for following detail.
So, go to the opening link.
READ ALL ABOUT IT. (Isn't that the '40's film cliche term, with the spinning newspaper image that stops with a big headline about some key film character's dilemma or comeuppance?)
How the Dayton appointed Met Council reacts to differing opinions and actions in East Bethel will say much about how heavy an eight hundred pound gorilla might choose to really weigh.
Stay tuned.
Also, you have to wonder who behind the curtain in placid East Bethel has nefarious land exploitation motives and dreams, and how that segment of "community opinion" now will exert its crabgrass insinuations given a changing of the guard. Crabgrass circumspection does happen, as well as it's bold and open encroachment when permitted -- but the result always seems to be the bothersome stuff showing up and prospering, despite conditional or climate change.
Crabgrass can often be the stuff of pure climate change skeptics, so pay attention to what happens as well as what's said. I should add just a few paragraphs following the above ABC Newspapers quote:
Moegerle promised that future meetings would be more elegant, but said the newly-elected members were concerned about the ability to work with City Administrator Douglas Sell and they were vocal in their skepticism of the sewer and water project during the campaign.
“This is not the most pleasant transition I suppose a city council could make,” DeRoche said. “It’s going to take a little time to weed through everything that’s happened. It was pretty obvious the voters wanted a change in direction and that’s exactly what our intent is to do.”
That "weed out" language, sure makes it seem as if Crabgrass is the target, huh?
Please do read the entire reporting. It's pure Gilbert and Sullivan, only without the singing or music. It's what local government could be, everywhere in Anoka County.
It is NOT boring. Not yet, at least.
_____________UPDATE_____________
It seems East Bethel people woke up, and none too soon. A reader comment accompanying the the ABC reporting states:
Curious George ### January 8, 2011 at 11:21 pm #
City Center??? I didn’t even know we were trying to build a city center…would that be the same sort of thing that just went bankrupt in Ramsey??
I’m all for a quaint little small town Mayberry, but you can’t just create that from scratch in a suburb. Look at that Blaine Village shopping mall thing over on Lexington and I-35W—guess it’s supposed to be some kind of replica small town…but give me a break–WalMart and Home Depot, a bunch of chain stores….
I sure hope the proposed City Cener for East Bethel isn’t just a shopping complex….
We need a city paper so one can keep up on this stuff.
Regarding East Bethel on the brink of self-ruin a la Ramsey Town Center but backing away; bad planning need not always hold sway. Things need not turn out as badly for a community as with Ramsey.
Ramsey had help, early on, from interested land speculators going so far as to install one of their kind onto council.
Now, however, in Ramsey, probably with the passage of time the names of individual crabgrass greed mongers and perpetrators no longer matter; the fact being individual prospering occurred when the public interest, in my opinion, was subverted.
East Bethel appears to have successfully backed from the brink, withdrawing now from potential Ramsey-like mistake.
These 2005 town record pages arguably demonstrate, however, the length of time it took for a voting majority of East Bethel community members to smell a rat and recognize and react to smoke-and-mirror things Ramsey failed to ever awaken to, (except for some but too few); with Ramsey letting havoc happen:
At least they in East Bethel did wake up.
Or it appears so from current events.
Late is far, far, far better than never.
However, if the housing bubble had not broken, who is to say what East Bethel might have suffered - indeed, what in another election or two, East Bethel still might suffer.
If you read the reporting about East Bethel, you might choose to not bypass reader comments.
_____________UPDATE_____________
Strib, same story - this link.
Less objective? You decide.
The new faces on council in East Bethel, this link.
What the lame ducks did after the election was excessive, abusive, and confrontational. They are getting deserved payback. Yet they whine, oh, how they whine.
Their actions were to see how voters felt and expressed those feelings at the ballot box, and then knowing that result, to push very, very, very hard against the expressed popular opinion.
It is hard to imagine a worse way to discharge a public trust.