Leigh Touchton posted a comment with a report from
last night’s Valdosta City Council meeting:

I won’t stay to the end in the future because if they are going to
make public attacks on citizens and then go into Executive session so
they don’t have to hear a rebuttal, then I don’t care to listen to their
bombast. Yost apparently thinks
your public criticism of the activists not
staying (and also the Tea Party left right after one of their members read
from the Bible about how laws and regulation are a sin–I had difficulty
keeping from laughing out loud—we’re in a recession because laws and
regulation were thrown away and banks made a video called Banks Gone
Wild…but I digress)…apparently Yost thinks your criticism of people
not staying is something he can use to good effect to nullify the need
to publicly address citizen complaints. Here’s his position, distilled:

“You won’t stay to the end, I’m offended. You called our important work
boring, I’m offended. (much redness of face, some veins popping out)
You come in here and talk to us like that then I’m not going to address
your complaints, I’m offended.”

Well I’m offended that a grown man elected to represent Valdosta acts
like that.

Let me go back and educate the gentle readers out there who haven’t

followed this saga from the beginning. WACE has been down there asking
for Mr. Yost and everyone else to get educated on the issue, to come
to our public events (never saw Yost at any of them but maybe he came,
I don’t know for sure), to respond to our issues publicly like a public
official is supposed to do because we are a democracy not a dictatorship,
and Yost occasionally does engage citizens from his dais, but when I’ve
seen him do it, he’s snarly about it.

Deidra White reiterated that she was not going to give her position
publicly from the dais, even though the segment called Council Comments
is the appropriate time for that to occur. She did say she would meet
with citizens and deliver her position there. I can’t understand the
big deal, because if she does meet with citizens we’ll broadcast her
position publicly, all public meetings are recorded by our members. At
least she was the only one who said she would meet with us.

I think they all need to go, this is simply ridiculous. I delivered my
official letter from our branch asking each member for a letter stating
their position on selling gray water to the Wiregrass incinerator, and
I’ll let you know if our branch has any better result in getting them
to state their position.

Looks to me like people staying to the end has resulted in several
interesting effects. More in a following post.

jsq