Enough

Guest post by Louis Eisenberg

On Saturday, February 12^th, 2011, the seeds that were planted in the 2010 Norfolk City Council elections began to bloom. The citizens noticed the results of what sunlight in the form of Tommy Smigiel, Angelia Williams and Andy Protogyrou can bring to our city. Three new Council members held the first of what will be many promised Town Hall meetings.  A diverse crowd of around 250 citizens were in attendance. This was an incredible accomplishment considering that the meeting was not made public until Thursday, February 10^th. The reason that the citizens were there was that some council members wanted to continue to do business as usual in darkness. The issue was Tivest, a development company, wants the city to secure all the leases against default with a guarantee. Tivest requested a third agreement, in the form of an amendment to the ordinance approving the project, one that called for the city to lease up to 65,000 square feet of space if the primary tenant defaults. The Southeastern Tidewater Opportunity Project, a private anti-poverty agency, would lease 100,000 square feet of office space. In other words, the developer would have little to no risk.

Also in attendance, lurking in the shadows, were observers sent by some of the non-attending city council members. Their job was to do a head count and report back to the mayor and non-attending council members, and try to hold their five votes in line, ones that will be necessary on Tuesday to pass the ordinance change. These observers could not report back that the meeting wasn’t well attended, because the numbers were better than to be expected with two days notice, and the numbers would be too hard to dispute. The observers would have to spin the attendance numbers by disparaging remarks about the citizens in attendance, which is the case confirmed by one of my sources. By making remarks such as “those in attendance were the same trouble makers that are at all city meetings, “a bunch of stupid negroes mixed in with racist whites that don’t want to see a black developer succeed”, and it was “just a grandstanding opportunity for council members that cannot get anything done for their constituency,” the observers discount the importance of citizens who are concerned how their tax dollars are spent. What these observers are reporting back to their paymasters is, in effect, that unless you agree with us, you don’t count. This is the delusionary “Norfolk council think” that has been propagated for years to maintain the establishment’s power.  It’s sort of like you can only be a member of our club if you keep your mouth shut and don’t ask any questions. In this way you won’t have a “long learning curve” and your membership will be assured.

No matter what the outcome of next Tuesday’s council vote on the Tivest issue, the number of citizens that have had enough of  “ business as usual” is growing.  I have never seen a more diverse, educated and well spoken crowd at any public meeting held in Norfolk. The common thread that united the citizens speaking in opposition to the proposed ordinance amendment was an appreciation of the sunlight being cast on city council business.  Thank you Council Members Angelia Williams, Tommy Smigiel and Andy Protogyrou for upholding your campaign promise of bringing more transparency to Norfolk government. If that is all you accomplish in your first term on council, that will be enough: enough sunlight to expose those that want to keep its citizenry in darkness and enough sunlight for a new seed that will be elected in the next city council election to grow.

Others reporting on the meeting this morning are Archie Whitehall and The Virginian-Pilot’s Harry Minium.