Dear Editor:
At the Aug. 28 council meeting Tom Roarty questioned several council members regarding the medical benefits they received from the town. Mayor Gonnelli believed that the figures that Mr. Roarty was using misrepresented the true cost to the taxpayers and would look into Roarty’s figures before making a response. Mr. Roarty replied that night was that he had received his figures from our town administrator.
At the Sept. 11 council meeting Mayor Gonnelli, blasted Mr. Roarty for the remarks he made during the Aug. 28 meeting, challenging the figures Mr. Roarty used that night. The mayor, after five minutes of knocking Mr. Roarty for pillow to post, said “I would say more but Mr. Roarty is not here to defend himself.” He then went on to chastise the local papers for giving headlines to Mr. Roarty’s comments at that Sept. 11 meeting in their papers.
Fast forward. At the Sept. 25 council meeting in attendance was Mr. Roarty. One would think that now after viewing the Aug. 28 meeting on cable and reading about the mayors comments regarding him in the local papers, he was there to defend his position. Maybe saying “mayor, lets compare your figures to the figures I came up with at the meeting I did attend.”
Well, that never happened. The record will show that this wannabe said nothing. However that was no shocker to me. The real shocker to me was that Mayor Gonnelli didn’t take the opportunity to confront Mr. Roarty that night with the figures Mr. Roarty presented at the Aug. 28 meeting. The handling of the whole episode by both parties was/is a joke. Let’s face it both parties should be embarrassed. Roarty, as to why he created this issue. Gonnelli, as to the way he answered it. A fiasco from beginning to end.
You cannot make things like this up. Often I’m accused of making jokes about our government in my letters. I do not! I just watch government and report what happened.
Tom Troyer
Former Board of Education member.