This is the latest video in our series of Sierra Madre X-Mayor Nancy Walsh's oddly incoherent City Hall performances. It was taped on September 23rd, the date of our most recent meeting of the City Council. As it always is with Nancy and her speeches, it truly is one doozy of a show.
For those of you with iPads and other devices like them, you can link to this video by clicking here.
While not quite as off the chain as her "We can take you out" tirade (link), this speech was intended as a kind of broadside against the City Hall reorganization and financial reforms initiated by current Councilmembers Rachelle Arizmendi and Denise Delmar. Instead it comes off as a toxic mix of poorly thought out and disconnected canards, Library hostage taking, and all larded over with a rapidly ramped up tone of hostility and resentment.
Much of her talk was haltingly delivered from notes that Nancy at times seemed barely capable of reading. As you watch notice how she paws at them throughout her short talk, as if desperately trying to dig a way out of her growing confusion.
While viewing this video it is also possible to wonder if she'd actually spent very much time with these notes before the meeting. A possibly bigger question being who might have actually written them for her.
If these notes had been ghostwritten for Nancy, then who are the cowards sending this poor confused woman to City Council meetings so that she can deliver their messages for them? Do these individuals lack the courage necessary to deliver these sorts of strange and incoherent speeches themselves?
Should we see this as an admission that even they know her attacks are pointless and irrational, and therefore would never care to attach their own names to them? Instead preferring to send in Nancy Walsh as their messenger, a furious one woman distraction from what really is an extremely serious matter?
At the end of this short video two uncomfortable things happen. First, and as you will see, Nancy steps back from the podium, looks over to the City Manager, smiles, and then loudly sucks her teeth. A tell if ever there was one.
The other is the stunned expressions on the faces of all five members of the City Council. As Nancy Walsh leaves the podium to walk up the aisle and back out into the night, their looks of embarrassment and silence are profound.
Obviously there were no questions for Nancy. You could have heard a pin drop.
Next Tuesday's Special City Council Meeting On The Budget
Here is an all too brief description of the excitement, taken from the September 30th City Council meeting agenda.
This may be a very significant meeting as it could indicate whether the Dude Faction of the City Council intends to honor the vote of the people of Sierra Madre on the UUT, thereby allowing it to sunset back down to 6%.
The people of this community have voted in favor of cutting their utility taxes twice, and within two years no less. Obviously this is a legitimate, and now legally reinforced, demand of the people. This City's government must now reduce utility taxes to their pre-2008 levels.
But will they? Is the era of the $37,600 a year health care plan really at an end? I personally doubt it. Apparently the City Council Dude Faction doesn't care to listen to the voters. They instead appear to believe that they are above the law, and beyond the reach of the taxpaying citizens of Sierra Madre.
There is even talk that rather than reducing the size of city government here, the CCDF will instead attempt a third vote on what are currently the highest city utility tax rates in California.
So who knows? Maybe we'll need to hire a lawyer and fight for this community's rights to have its UUT vote honored. And in the process restore democracy to Sierra Madre.
http://sierramadretattler.blogspot.com