As Port Commissioner Bill Ward said tonight at the closing of the Port Meeting

“This is an end of an era, and a new one is beginning”

 

It truly was an end of an era as the last public meeting of the Port Commissioner Alan Hargrave and Jim Carroll will be replaced by commissioners elect Bill Smith and Mark Lampton.

 

I was surprised and pleasantly pleased by Bill Ward who stopped a $2million land purchase that appeared to be ramroded by Hargrave, Carroll, Ripp and McPherson.

Commissioner Ward had not seen the Purchase Agreement and the foursome pushed to get it through. You would have thought Hargrave and Carroll would have learned their lessons by taking the advice of McPherson (who ramroded the Riverwalk option agreements through) without some of the commissioners even reading the documents. This behavior eventually cost the taxpayers around $1million and counting.

So I applauded Bill Ward for not going along with “the crowd” by signing a document he hasn’t read and shame on McPherson for assuming the commissioners will just take his word for something.

 

I thought the outgoing commissioners would have expressed some grand insights about their experience on the Port…..Hargrave – nothing. Carroll gave a great educational lecture on port tax dollars and his support of the Port. They leave office with their heads held up and a sense of decorum.

 

Not so with ECFR commissioner candidate Martha Martin, who chastised Carroll during the public comments. As a person who tends to advocate niceties and no name calling, she certainly violated this characteristic during this meeting. She reminded Carroll that he lost the primary election with a resounding “you are fired”. It’s this writer’s opinion that she could have been kind and kept her opinions to herself and enjoyed her incoming commissioners, but chose to stick the knife in Carroll and then twist it.

 

Well, as she pushes her special interest agenda in 2010, we hope she remembers what goes around comes back around.

 

Although I didn’t agree with everything Hargrave and Carroll did, they also had some great accomplishments and I for one, thank them for their service.

 

I wish the incoming commissioners the best of success. I hope they do not bow to special interests but keep in mind the interests of the entire community and lead from that premise.

 

-Gary