City council wasting time and resources pursuing censorship

The residents of San Bernardino are being ill served by the council members and should let them know their displeasure in the next elections.  The city council is obsessed with attacking Mayor John Valdivia and is wasting time and taxpayer’s resources doing this and ironically are engaging in exactly the kind of misuse of city funds for personal gain that they are accusing the Mayor of.

The current pursuit of the council members is to censure the mayor for a variety of petty reasons, mostly centered around a VIP Reception the Mayor had prior to the San Bernardino State of the City event. That type of event is a common occurrence in most cities. Mayor’s and other elected officials have these types of special receptions all the time and they are paid for with public funds.

In fact, previous Mayors of the City of San Bernardino have engaged in very much the same type of events whether for economic development purposes or otherwise.  Holding a VIP reception to advance the goals of the City is not impermissible in fact it is to be encouraged.  The event was not political and therefore not a misuse of public funds.

The very ideas of censure is a waste of time and energy.  The definition of censure is loosely to express severe disappointment of someone or something in a formal way.  There can be no question that several of the city council members loathe the Mayor and the feeling is mutual.  They routinely denounce him and his actions publicly and even from the dais at meetings.  So why take the formal action of censuring the mayor at the cost of hundreds if not thousands of hours of city employee’s time and a huge amount of taxpayer dollars expended in the process.

The answer of course is it’s all about politics.  An election is looming and they want to see the Mayor lose.  Being able to say in political mail that he was censured by the City Council looks bad and they will use it to try to defeat him.  So who exactly is abusing public dollars for political gain here – well that seems pretty obvious now doesn’t it?