The Worcester City Council met on Tuesday, Sept. 16. The councilors last met on September 9.
What’s Going on Here?
The light agenda played itself out. The city council meeting lasted 22 minutes. The first 8 of those minutes were:
- The pledge of allegiance
- The national anthem
- A proclamation for a Weeek without Driving organized by WalkBike Worcester for the week of September 29th through Oct 5th
- A proclamation for the local Salvation Army and American Red Cross in Worcester for September as Emergency Preparedness Month.
- All of the items were sent to committee or to the manager.
- The drone report, and the fire blanket report were sent to Public Safety without comment.
-The report on sidewalk and street construction had two total comments from Councilor Russell and Councilor Candy Mero-Carlson. Their criticism of the Public Works Department led to this report. It was sent to committee.
Remember This
If you remember when the city council meeting was interrupted by protestors in June, Mayor Petty made the rounds of local media complaining about how much work needed to be done. As the heading on our preview mentioned, the city council has now met 5 times since July 1st. 3 of the meetings lasted until well after 10 o’clock, which means maybe those meetings could have been reduced with work shifted to this meeting.
I would also remind you that dozens of citizen petitions have been denied. I recently submitted one, which was denied by the Clerk’s office (through the City Solicitor) and was directed to email my councilor or the at-larges to bring it up for me. As was predicted here, no one has answered. In this case, I, like many Worcester voters, am now disenfranchised locally. My representatives do not respond to their own process, only to sustained public shame.
It is what it is.
22 Minutes. Is this the regularly scheduled programming? Is this what the voters want?
