Did You Know Palm Bay’s Council and Management Are Incompetent?
Over much of the last year citizens in Palm Bay conducted a petition drive to have a recent fee assessment by the city council to be rescinded by voters.For a petition drive to be successful the signatures must be of registered voters and the city charter says they must be verified by the Supervisor of Elections.State law tells the Supervisor what is required for a petition signature to be valid.Supervisor of Elections Lori Scott knows the law and follows it religiously.Palm Bay doesn’t seem to get that!
The Palm Bay petition forms were deficient and the Supervisor told them as much.Rather than understand they must comply with the law the council, in its infinite lack of wisdom, decided to try and find ways around the law and their own charter rather than simply comply with the law and tell the petition gatherers that they needed new forms.
The council went as far as to file a lawsuit against the Supervisor of Elections to force her to accept petitions that were out of compliance with the law.It was a nonstarter from the beginning.After meeting and conferring the suit was finally dropped when the idiots at the city figured out they could not win by asking a court to rule against the law when the law was very clear.
The question must remain then, why the long delay and go through the exercise in futility to file and then later drop the lawsuit?Was the city collecting this fee throughout?If the fee is rescinded will the city owe the citizens a huge refund?Has the council put the city in a bad position with ill thought out decisions in the process?Is management incompetent in advising council to take these actions?Does the Palm Bay saga never end?
It’s an interesting situation and we’ll get the lawsuit story from Supervisor of Elections Lori Scott when I return from vacation on Monday, July 1st. Join us then for our next edition of Bill Mick LIVE.
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