Opinion
Hey, Mayor, let's get drunk, but . . .
Don't ask
me to respect the governing body
By GEOFF DAVIDIAN
Putnam Pit
editor
I ran into Mayor Davis the other day at Spankies Restaurant, where
she and her husband had stopped for dinner.
I've met the mayor on four or five occasions, but never in anything one
might call social.
The Pit sent a couple of glasses of wine to the Davis' table, and
they came by to thank Pit Systems Editor Mike Hodges and me for
the gesture.
I had to take note that the mayor was very friendly, and it is not difficult
to understand the qualities that got her elected.
Also there was Councilman Bettye Vaden, eating in the back with two women.
She, too, was very friendly, as always, and took time to chat for a moment.
Now I had to ask myself why do such nice people not run a nice government?
When I went before the City Council March 6 to discuss civil rights abuses,
I was warned by the mayor to not say bad things about anybody. But what
if they are true, Mayor? Do you still not want them said? Is there some
realty that you don't want addressed?
The mayor said that I was to make my presentation in a professional manner.
She did not warn anyone else to make their presentations in a professional
manner.
She told me that the council was the governing body, as though that, in
itself was somehow worthy of esteem.
Mayor, I'll drink with you anytime. You seem like a nice woman and you
appear to have a brain. But the city government is clearly out of control,
and the "governing body" is the object of ridicule.
At lunch with the roundtable group at Rice's Restaurant the other day,
the discussion turned to a billboard on I-40, that might say, "Cookeville:
America's most suable city."
If you think that this council warrants respect with three pending civil
rights suits against the city, a member of the "governing body" indicted
for official misconduct, a police captian shifted to another department
for holding a gun to another officer's head and a decent police chief fired
for trying to run an honest department, guess again.
You don't get respect by those kinds of actions. You get respect for being
an honest government, altruistic, economical, socially conscious and respectful
of the rights of others.
And that, mayor, the "governing body" is not.