Did The Mayor Balk?
.Mayor cancels meeting with Hank ….
I got up this morning prepared to go to the mayor’s office. looked at my e mail and saw a message from him that we can reschedule our meeting “if it works” for me.I e mailed him back no, let’s go ahead with our meeting today, I will see you in 45 minutes.
I was in my car on dunlawton ave. and williamson ave. when I got a phone call from him, the mayor telling me that he meant that we have to cancel today because he is working on some estimates. I told him ok, I can live with that and we will reschedule to an as yet date to be named.
e mails follow:
nope, lets meet as schedule, today friday 8 am in your office. I will see you in 45 minutes.
hank
> From: AllenG@port-orange.org
> To: poimages@outlook.com
> Subject: RE: we meet in the mayor’s office 8 am, july 25
> Date: Fri, 25 Jul 2014 09:06:13 +0000
>
> We can reschedule if it works for you. Was working on estimates .
> From: AllenG@port-orange.org> To: poimages@outlook.com
> Subject: RE: we meet in the mayor’s office 8 am, july 25
> Date: Fri, 25 Jul 2014 09:06:13 +0000
>
> We can reschedule if it works for you. Was working on estimates .
====================
I ask my readers not to post comments about the Mayor cancelling. He is a busy man, and these things do happen. In my opportunity to meet with the Mayor I want everything about our meeting to be positive and to afford the mayor the opportunity to put forward the best he can about all the negative issues that have arisen in Port Orange, and speculations. I will challenge interpretations by the Mayor which do not hold water in my opinion. Here let me rant for my readers:; I know we have a lot of water down the drain with money in the pipes, and water in the lakes where dirt has been excavated. Ok, I got it out for all of our benefits, but lets give the Mayor a chance to say what he wants to say in a positive way. For instance, “Mayor, when you answered Lori Brown saying that Ted Noftall was not a good citizen because he wants to keep taxes down” I suspect you were having a bad day and mis-spoke. What did you really mean to say”? That is my approach and I think the exchange of ideas between the Mayor and me will be enlightening.
Thank you all who support me in this endeavor and I don’t see how I could possibly let you down, but I will be on my toes.
— hank
Hank,
All of this posting emails between you and the Mayor scheduling and changing a meeting time seems childish. It would be great if this site was 100% for issues that mattered. Scheduling and meeting time changes seem to be To Much Information. This is an example of how social media is damaging our society. Us taking a good advancement in communication and taking it down a bad path!! Lets keep it on a higher level!!!
so sorry onlooker, but I had thought that some readers were waiting for a report of my meeting with the mayor. You are correct, I could have just written “The mayor because of other commitments cancelled his meeting with me.” I will try not to be so childish in the future and not damage our society. But thank you for your opinion which furthers the childish conversation.
An added thought. At the last city council meeting, the mayor put out an invitation to meet with any citizen who wanted to discuss issues. I took him up on that, asking for my own format about the meeting. But any one can contact Mayor
Green and have his/her own meeting with him. Even supporters of Mayor Green can meet and discuss issues with him. And then all those who do meet with the mayor can report the discussion had with the mayor, in their own way, on this web site or mine, if they want to. I would feel more comfortable if I were not the only one meeting with the mayor to discuss the problems we see. Please do not start accusing me of grabbing the spot light of information on this or any other web site. We can all write what we are concerned about. I probably have an advantage because I am a fast typist having worked summers in the communcation room of Dean Witters and company stock brokers, in the Manhattan stock exchange location. Some day let me tell you in detail how the teletype operators sent messages, to the Chicago and California offices. Another set of workers manned the phones direct to the stock exchange and to Chicago and California. Just about all communication had to be verified by teletype messages, and those teletype operators had to be fast and needed an aide to put and remove the messages in front of them, because they were that fast.
I was allowed to type out longer, non urgent messages, which had information about stock trends from Dean Witter’s and company and that went onto a tape for later insertion into sending machines at the end of the day. It was interesting.
But there I go again about me. About you, sit down with Mayor Green and talk. He has made himself available to all. These are historical if not hysterical times in Port Orange, participate. And by the way, if you are not a typist there is a program to buy which allows you to speak into a microphone and the program types your words. Another way to reach out to the public without typing is to video record your words , send them up to U tube, and ask me to embed your video on my web site, which I would be happy to do. But it seems to me that many commentators on this web site are doing ok with their typing and getting their opiinons across. I am so happy to be living my retirement years with this technology. It is almost as much fun as listening to a police scanner.
There I go again, becoming childish. Sorry.
Mr. Onlooker is correct. I should stick to the issues in my comments and not wander off in my literary vein as if I was writing on my own web site. Editor of this web site, please delete and remove my tome previously posted regarding my added thought and my experience working summers in a wall street stock offices. It has nothing to do with what people are interested in this blog, and I apologize for getting carried away with my own personal experiences, which have nothing to do with the issues at hand.
I make it a point to not make these mistakes in the future.
Why wasn’t the rest of council included in the invitation to meet with citizens? They should include employees in the invitation. Maybe there should be a series of special council meetings that are open forums to discuss specific issues so council can get input from citizens and employees to help solve problems in a positive way. We could bring in experts on things like meters and reclaimed water to educate council and citizens. There are city employees that could do educational presentations about city operations. POG TV could be used as an educational tool. Well informed citizens are happy citizens. Maybe add a few more minutes to the mayors egg timer. The mayor himself said we have a lot of talented people in the city but it appears he only wants them to talk to him. Let’s open the bureaucratic veil and have open communication with our entire council and work together. All the secrets and half truths just frustrate and anger people. If management can’t get the job done maybe council needs to step up and get more involved.
Mr. Woodman I agree with you. But anyone can ask to meet with a city council person and we all should do more of that. In the climate that we have today in our city, it would be good for all city council people to encourage people to come in to speak with them. But our city council people are only part timers and work at (can I, should I say?)
real jobs to make a living.
Please bear with me to suffer a little personal rendition. You have read this before, but I want to expand just a little. I think it was 2008, or at least one of the years when Steindoerfer was on city council, and I had sent a hard hitting e mail to the city council people, which I never published, telling them that there was no transparency in city council meetings. I speculated on why this was so, and two on the city council expressed at a city council meeting that they did not like what I wrote. My expanded thought is why in the world didn’t any one on city council ask me to come in and talk to them to further explain my concerns? Councilman Pohlmann did come to speak to me some months later, after I started to air some of my speculations on my web site. And that was good. But especially the two on the city council who took exception to my e mail remarks, should I would think, have asked to speak to me about my concerns.
This is old news, but should we wonder how we come to a hostile climate in Port Orange Government and Politics in the year 2014? I do have to add, bear with me, I had predicted years ago that the national mood of citizens towards congress and the senate would come to Port Orange if the city council did not change its secretive ways in making decisions before the public in city council meetings.
No need to be sorry Hank, just my opinion. Post your report after you meet with him. For me, the initial mistake was promoting that you were meeting with him. Why not just meet with him then report? Social media today had made us feel like we have to tell everyone everything that’s on our mind, which normally ends up on a negative track. None of us are really that important. I just expect more out of all of us who want to live in a quality city. I support your inquirey of the mayor and any positive change that may come out of it. I just don’t need to know about every conversation that you’ve ever had with him about such simple things.
You make a valid point mr. Onlooker. and in another post I recently made on this blog I am going to look and see if I can redact it. when I write I get carried away that I am writing on my own web site, and start writing about myself. I wish I did not have that need. For sure I bore people, and it is my problem.
I took the opportunity to post that I was meeting with the Mayor in order to repost the issues that I think we need to explore. But as Buddy Lacour had said, we are all proabably getting sick of all these negative things.
I will make it a point to just posting comments about the issues. Thank you for your reminder to put me back on track. I totally agree with you.
I don’t find anything about the posting childish. When it comes to dealing with the Mayor it is best to get everything documented.