Nothing. Not a word.
The only returned message from the emails sent one week ago to the four Moundsville council members who voted to refuse Moundsville residents their right to vote on a busy levy was a “Failure Notice” for the one transmitted to Councilman Eugene Saunders.
He doesn’t use his city email, I’ve come to learn, so the City shut it down instead of paying for it. So much, I guess, for the 21st Century for Mr. Saunders, but the others apparently received the note with my request made in the name of the people of Moundsville:
Please reply with a short explanation as to why you decided to vote against placing the OVRTA Bus Levy on the Moundsville ballot this November 5th. Please be advised your explanation will be published on LEDE News on June 30th, and if you fail to reply, that will be reported. … Thank you for your time.
Well, here we are on June 30th and the report is … crickets.
But the silence generates even more questions:
- Do any of the council members utilize their email addresses? If so, do they respond to the messages when the sender requests them to do so?
- If the city’s landlords plan to raise rental rates, why not allow the renters to decide for themselves if they wish to pay more for their apartment or house?
- Are the council members maintaining their silence in the hope I will stop asking them to fully explain their reasoning for voting against the public’s right to vote on the bus levy?
Because I won’t.
So, City Clerk Sondra Hewitt soon will be receiving a FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) request from me requesting several pieces of information concerning meeting minutes, transcriptions of all public conversation as it pertains to the bus levy, and copies of any information (ridership numbers, costs associated with ballot placement, planned bus stops, tax rates, etc.) provided to the council members by members of the Moundsville city administration prior to the June 18th council vote.
That way, if the council members do not wish to simply reply and explain their reasons, at least the residents of Moundsville can evaluate the amount of city assistance requested by each of the council members – besides conducting fake votes of Facebook, of course – before they voted on such an important matter.
If and when any of the four council members – Hunt, Wood, Saunders, and Chamberlain – responds, the correspondence will be published, and once the FOIA-requested information is received, it will be shared, too.
That’s because the public should know the reasons why the four council members decided to make the public’s decision for them.
