Well, you figured it would come to this. After all the animosity and rancor between Mayor Funkhouser and the City Council over the role of his wife, Apparent Co-Mayor and Volunteer of the Decade Gloria Squitiro, the Council has finally voted to closely regulate the volunteers at City Hall. This sure seems like a symbolic move, since all it really does is force Ms. Squitiro to work from home. Now, other bloggers have this covered way better than we ever could, but let’s at least take a look at some of the impassioned pleas we heard from the mayor prior to the vote — if only to remind ourselves what an inefficient government looks like.
The mayor took the “personal appeal” approach to the problem, as he singled out individual council members and asked them not to vote for the resolution.
He argued that the ordinance will simply divide them further and asked each one, “Can we stand together today?”
He called out each by name, described some of their political successes and, in some cases, even expressed regret for past differences. Funkhouser also apologized for punishing Councilman Ed Ford, whom Funkhouser removed as transportation committee chairman after Ford played a lead role in retaining the city manager over Funkhouser’s protests.
At the end, Funkhouser turned to Marcason and asked: “Jan, do you really want to be known as the councilwoman who banned the first lady from City Hall?”
Man, this sure comes close to groveling. And in the end, how many of the other 12 members of the council voted yea? 12.
Perhaps the mayor should turn that inquisitive eye inwards and ask “Mark, do you really want to be known as the mayor who accomplished almost nothing because he refused to recognize what a self-induced distraction this had become? Do you really want to be the mayor who had achieved a truly Bushian level of divorce from reality?”
In the end, Mayor Funkhouser, citizens don’t care about the role of your wife. They care about good and efficient government, and making public services work for taxpayers. Right now, you don’t seem to be making advancements on any of those fronts.
[...] and Pseudo-co-sort-of-mayor Gloria Squitiro have thrown us a curveball. So last week the council passed an ordinance regulating volunteers at City Hall, a measure aimed squarely at volunteer extraordinaire and [...]
[...] and more of his attention. In early September the City Council did the previously unthinkable and banned the footless wonder from City Hall, though that did not stop newly minted linguistics professor Squitiro from trying to [...]