Beck’s hamstringing ways likely gave candidate pause

You gotta be kidding me! Local resident Douglas Carrer offers his opinion on why the search for the new City Manager took so long:

Maybe there is another reason–the true reason and not just an excuse. Maybe the favorite candidate did his homework and decided he did not wish to be in a work environment that has already run off three outstanding, dedicated public servants–outgoing director of Fredericksburg’s Economic Development and Tourism office, Kathy Beard, former City Manager, Marvin Bolinger, and Fredericksburg’s chief planner, Jervis Hairston.

Outstanding, dedicated public servants with marketable skills and talents do not desire or need to work in an atmosphere that is headed by a cabal–Bill Beck, Vice Mayor Scott Howson, and Councilman Matt Kelly–which utilizes a paranoid micromanagement leadership style.

I really hate it when people steal my buzzwords. Such as ‘hamstring’, the word used to describe what Shelton’s FOIA lawsuit was all about. At least the ‘cabal’ thing we’ve heard before. But “paranoid micromanagement leadership style?” That’s new coming from someone other than the usual suspects.

Granted that’s not the term I would have used to describe this Council, but you know something, Douglas is right. If anything it shows they take their election to public office seriously.

Douglas. . . buddy, these guys were elected on a platform of good government (Beck and Kelly were anyhow, Howson simply never lost his soul while in public office). Given that, they above all are keenly aware they are endowed with the public trust, and their stewardship on Council is directed towards that end alone – to preserve and protect the public trust. “Paranoid micromanagement” only tells me that they take that stewardship seriously, unlike their predecessors who systematically abused it.