This is down the road in Asheville, but I love it:
The nice thing about Asheville City Council meetings is that one can count on Councilman Dr. Carl Mumpower to say what needs to be said. The downside is that his peers seldom vote with him.
At Tuesday’s meeting, Mumpower yanked almost every item on the long consent agenda for a separate vote. He voted against the acceptance of a $200,000 US Department of Justice Weed and Seed Grant because he did not want to be a party to the “flawed process” of increasing the national debt and “draining the life out of the country.”
Mumpower then voted against four state grants. Two were for amenities for local senior centers, and two were for stormwater planning and mitigation. Mumpower did not want to be using state funds on “nonsense,” when the state can’t even fund its judicial system enough to guarantee its citizens their Sixth Amendment right to a speedy trial.
He then voted against a $10,000 city sponsorship of the 2008 Advance Auto Parts Big South Confrence Women’s Basketball Championship. Citizens stretched to pay their property taxes after the last reval didn’t need to be shelling out for this. Then, in a joyous moment, three other council members voted with Mumpower to cancel the mayor’s plans to contract for a $1200, 45-minute professional presentation on growth management for their retreat.
It just goes to show that it is aboslutely not a given in everyone’s mind that government should spend money, no matter how noble the cause. I guess the closest thing we have to a Carl Mumpower here in Greensboro is council Mike Barber, who (fortunately) has made it his duty to call out questionnable government expenditures. I’d love to see Barber pull every item from the consent agenda during a city council meeting. Easy for me to say, though, because I’m sitting at home watching the meeting on cable access. I can flip over to O’Reilly or the basketball game or whatever if things get too boring.
