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Time for Menne to do some soul searching |
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Monday, 24 December 2007 |
Elected officials, it would seem, should from time to time engage in some soul searching and self examination of the job they are doing for the public they were elected to serve. That time may well be at hand for Wyoming Council member Gary Menne. It’s a good bet that it probably won’t happen, but Menne needs to engage in the process.
It was troubling this fall when Menne went to court for a restraining order against Mayor Sheldon Anderson after making accusations that the mayor had threatened Menne and his family.
It wasn’t proven and a judge tossed out Menne’s bid in short order.
As troubling as the court matter was, last week’s dog and pony show by Menne before the city council where the status of Fire Chief Dennis Berry was questioned is down right disturbing.
Menne has been a fixture in Wyoming politics for years, usually staying in the shadows where he has been a manipulator, but not a player. That changed a year ago when Wyoming voters elected him to a four-year term.
That has been a springboard for Menne to carry his style of governance to the council chambers.
It is certainly his right, and to some extent his duty, to question how his government functions. It is his right to ask questions. He should not be criticized for doing such.
But when Menne crosses the boundary lines of what is good taste, he needs to be reprimanded. He needs to reassess how he operates. Call it soul searching.
As we understand it, the matter regarding Fire Chief Berry came to light over a question as to how the chief is put in office and less clear facts over possible conflicts of interest because Berry has extended family members who are in the employ of the city.
It may not have been intended as a personal attack on Berry, but many may see it that way. Even a hint of a question of the capabilities and integrity of a man like Dennis Berry smacks of hypocrisy.
There is no one in Wyoming who has given more and asked for so little in return than Berry.
Menne can certainly have questions in his own mind. But to run the matter through the council as an agenda item is flat out wrong.
There are avenues for questions to be followed that don’t turn a council meeting into a three-ring circus but Menne did not bother to use them.
There have been other elected officials in our area who would rather blind-side a government employee with a question or a problem at a meeting, rather than seeking the answers through other means. Menne takes the matter to new levels with this style.
But it is nothing new, not really. He has a history of causing trouble, be it in a failed election bid for mayor of Wyoming or trying to influence the election of a county commissioner to represent the Wyoming area.
Now that he is an elected official, he is carrying his practice to new levels. And it needs to stop.
His attempts to interject his ideas into the fire department operation failed miserably. That should have been a lesson.
His thought of trying to go 10 rounds with Mayor Anderson also ended in a TKO that probably didn’t last two rounds. Perhaps in Sheldon Anderson there is a lesson for Menne that he is in over his head in trying to pick a fight that he won’t win.
Menne needs to get back to representing the people of Wyoming and forget about his private missions that do nothing but cause trouble and give the city of Wyoming a black eye.
And they are missions that are also giving Menne a black eye and a bloody nose.
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