BRET'S CITY NOTEBOOK FOR JANUARY 29, 2012

Town Talk reporter, Bret McCormick, provided us with another installment of his City Notebook today. (See: "City Notebook: Question about Alexandria councilman's status delays agenda").

I will not repeat all of the details on "Tuesday's Alexandria City Council meeting when the council voted 4-3 to retroactively ratify all official acts made by new District 3 Councilman Jerry Jones since his appointment Dec. 13". id. (See: "YESTERDAY'S VOTE BY ALEXANDRIA CITY COUNCIL ON JERRY JONES: WILL AN ETHICS COMPLAINT FOLLOW?").

Bret did a pretty good job of reporting the facts of that vote. "Jones cast the deciding vote in the matter, which prompted District 1 Councilman Ed Larvadain III to ask if Jones was allowed to vote, or if he should recuse himself", but "Trey Gist, a contract attorney for the city, said there was no issue with Jones voting on the matter". id. "It affects the governance of the city; it doesn't affect him directly," Gist said." id.

Sure it does Trey, except for Jones' serving on the City Council and an earlier pay period for him. A good reporter would have at least asked those questions.

The discussion on Jones caused the meeting to run well past its allotted time, causing items before the Economic, Workforce and Planning Development Committee to be delayed and also delaying the start of the council's regular meeting., and that "didn't sit well with Jones, chairman of the Economic, Workforce and Planning Development Committee". id.

But Bret failed to mention that it was all of the time taken up by our verbose Mayor Jacques Roy discussing his major budget amendment in the Finance and Legal Affairs Committee that took up the most of the time and the Jones matter took up little time. ("ALEXANDRIA CITY COUNCIL MEETING OF 1\24\2012").

See Also:

REPOST: FULL CITY COUNCIL VIDEO OF 1\24\2012