Tuesday, October 6, 2009

Community Summit 2009

On Monday evening Virginia Beach held a Community Summit. Residents were asked questions derived from City Council's two days of strategic planning in August. 80 residents came to the convention center to participate.

It was an enjoyable evening that brought forth some intriguing ideas. A couple of the revenue ideas were ordered to be studied by City Staff when Council reconvened on Tuesday morning.

However, the evening saw more antics by the Virginia Beach Taxpayers Alliance (VBTA). First, Maximum Leader Robert Dean brought a large sign attacking the City. (On Tuesday morning it was noted that such behavior is part of what costs the VBTA seats on city committees.) Second, at Table 13 the VBTAers (Dean and Al Saferstein) tried to prevent the recording of any ideas they disagreed with. Under the rules, all suggestions were to be written down. Third, Table 13 provided one of the most extreme ideas of the night: selling off Virginia Beach's public libraries. That's right: VBTAers would close our libraries! With policy planks that utterly beyond the pale, no wonder they can't even come close to winning a City Council seat.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Any significance to them being seated at "Table 13'?

Avenging Archangel said...

No, as Tables 12 and 13 were the two originally designated for walk-ins who hadn't preregistered.