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Thursday, February 11, 2016 - February 17, 2016
Your Voice, Your Community
Since 1996
Councilmember Alex Blackburn Steals the Show at State of City Event
COMPLIMENTARY COPY VOLUME 20, NO. 6
BY SUSAN MOTANDER
Alex Blackburn said he has observed that councilmembers are often easily distracted by flattery and sycophantic awards.
The Old Town Report BY PAM FITZPATRICK I think I need to temporarily rename this column “The Brown Paper Report.” SEE PAGE 14
– Photo by Terry Miller
Before the mayor dropped his bombshell announcement, Councilmember Alex Blackburn shook up the State of the City event with his own comments. He went “off script,” in fact he virtually went “off the reservation” by giving his impressions of how the city was being run. His critique is powerful. His comments started calmly in praising the mayor for forsaking “the opportunity to monopolize the spotlight and grandstand for an hour” by allowing the other members of the council deliver parts of the address. Then he gave a forewarning of what lay ahead saying, “I hope he does not regret his decision by the end of the evening.” After praising City Manager Oliver Chi for his hard work, he gave a brief synopsis of what his portion of the state of the city was scripted to be, the development and execution of various city projects, but then he moved to his assessment of what the he and his “colleagues on the council, can do better.” Rather SEE PAGE 15
Mayor Adams Calls for Return to Mayoral Rotation Monrovia Mayor Tom Adams used the State of the City address (which he referred to as the “State of the Community”) to put forward the idea of returning to a rotationally selected mayor from the mem-
bers of the council. Monrovia shifted to electing the mayor directly in 1978 with the election of Patricia Ostrye, then Fred Stewart, followed by Bob Bartlett in 1988. Bartlett held the office for
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more than ten years. The term of office for the mayor is two years with the other council members elected to four-year terms. Adams said he was not doing this because he did not
want to be mayor, a position to which he was just elected in April of last year, but rather because he thought it would “remove a distraction from SEE PAGE 14