Questions Arise Over Mayor, City Manager's D.C. Trip

The council continues to be ignorant or not interested in what the Mayor does or how she spends money.

Let me give you something recent for instance:

Several weeks ago the Mayor and Interim City Manager Brad Hulsey (maybe not for long) took a trip to Washington DC. 

They went along with the Cobb Chamber of Commerce. The Chamber does this every year and invites Cobb cities to go along. In the past we still pay our way but they make certain arrangements for us, or did. The questions that I wrote to all members and the mayor was: How much did it cost, what was accomplished? 

That seems simple enough and I suspect that the mayor would have trumpeted this to everyone at the regular Monday nights meeting. I did this as an interested citizen so here is what I get:

I see Member Cheryl Sarvis at the Powder Springs Day event. To both questions she had no answer. She did not know how much was spent or what was talked about.

From member Wizner I get some snippy letter letter telling me about how DC is the Nations Capitol and I should know why we would go there. He pointed out that we went there about the NS railyard matter.

No we did not, former Mayor Sailors and I went there and paid our own way where we testified before the Transportation Sub-Committee. That was before, by the way, I was ever elected. A minor point for sure but then his letter was every bit as minor. 

The facts are different than his letter. The Council was never told that the two Chief Executives would be gone for three days. Nor were they told how much and of course they were not told what was accomplished.

In fact they would not have been told if it were not for one member noticed this in a weekly report that Mr. Hulsey is good enough to supply. It still is not clear though what was accomplished. They surely did not ask for money. What legislation could they lobby for or against? 

This is all to typical of what seems to happen from the Mayor's office.

Next time I will talk with you about the City Manager's job and why we never could keep one. A few folks at City Hall will be very angry with me both for this column and the one that comes next time.

Perhaps some of you folks will actually start to wonder what goes on and start asking questions yourself. Maybe we can get three council members who will do the same.

Thanks for reading,

Thomas D. Bevirt

Writing for Patch Local Voices is open to everyone. If you're interested, email michael.stone@patch.com.