Ellisville Article 9 Amendment Proposal Withdrawn
The City Council held a special meeting Thursday to discuss the issue, but the Council moved to have the sole agenda item withdrawn.
After a roughly four-hour meeting Wednesday, Ellisville City Council's special meeting Thursday to consider a proposal to amend Article 9's recall process lasted less than 25 minutes.
Council Member Troy Pieper moved to amend the agenda and withdraw the Article 9 proposal within the first few minutes of the meeting.
"I really feel this is not the right time for this," Pieper said. "We all have a lot going on."
The withdrawal passed unanimously by present council members including Mayor Adam Paul. Council Member Matt Pirrello was absent from the proceedings.
Residents and business owners continued to voice opinions during public comments following the withdrawal. While some admitted to changing their original comments based on the council's decision to withdraw, others voiced continued opposition to the potential of the amendment as well as the pending Walmart development.
Liz Schmidt, the interim chair of the Article 9 Alliance, called the council "politically tone deaf," but said to the council, "Maybe you're starting to listen by dropping this amendment."
Former Ellisville mayor Edward O'Reilly asked during his comments who sponsored the amendment language. Wednesday's work session agenda noted Pirrello's name next to the charter amendment item, but the question was left directly unanswered.
E. Schmidt
6:54 am on Friday, August 17, 2012
Thanks to everyone who attended last night's hastily schedule "Special City Council" meeting. It certainly was "special" in more ways than I could have imagined.
The Ellisville Article 9 Alliance planned to go forward with our recall efforts regardless of any proposed changes to the city charter.
Of course the irony was that the council would have had to place the proposed charter changes on the Nov. 6th ballot and ask the very people they've been ignoring the past two years on the Walmart TIF -- the voters -- to restrict their right to recall council members and make it more difficult for the voters to hold the council accountable for their bad political decisions.
This attempt to change the rules in the middle of the game to protect their own hides will no doubt go down as one of the biggest amateur rank moves in the history of Ellisville municipal government.
Rockwood 25
10:51 pm on Friday, August 17, 2012
Withdrawing the proposal is one of the best moves the Board has recently taken. I just hope they don't try another way around this.