IR City Council Incompetent

I submitted the following to both the Iron Mountain Daily News
as well as the Iron County Reporter. The Daily News, as far as
I have been able to discern from emails with the editor there, is
deathly afraid of being sued by any individual cast in a bad light
in any article, even letters to the editor. That, in my opinion, is
a lousy way to run any publication, let alone a newspaper.

Our freedoms are sourced, by many authorities on the subject,
in a document called the Magna Carta. What if those barons,
who forced the English king to capitulate and sign the document,.
had been afraid of repercussions after the fact. Fear of the
wrongdoer is precisely what leads to the class bully as well
as political tyranny. We awarded Mr. Perlongo a "Lump of
Coal" award for his performance on Iron River's city council
last year. Please see:

http://ironcountydoings.blogspot.com/2013/02/first-annual-awards.html

Our letter to the editors follows:

=====================

They say that eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. Vigilance
is not enough, people have to act on the information as well.
One of the initiatives scheduled for the next ballot in Iron River
is the elimination of “conflict of interest” from the Iron River
city charter. The change was introduced by Al Perlongo and
approved by the city council in a meeting on August 15, 2012.
He cast the deciding vote. His membership on the council,
while concurrently being fire chief, was specifically prohibited
by state laws and the very charter restriction he illegally voted
to eliminate. Perlongo was in violation of charter and laws but
he felt he had a higher calling that was more important and, just
like Richard Nixon, he put his personal interests first. He should
not benefit from this violation of state law (MCL 15.182, 15.183)
and the charter (§ 2.05(a).) Why did the state have to get involved
before Perlongo could be persuaded to resign? Where was our
local political “leadership” on this?

I have once again written to the Michigan Attorney General and
the county prosecutor, this time asking that the ballot initiative be
removed before the election. As the time is very short, I urge all
Iron River taxpayers and voters to write, or call, the prosecutor
and the Attorney General.

Fredrick Hayek, in his landmark book The Road To Serfdom,
writes that man is free who must obey only the law, not other
men. Hayek’s proposition is mostly true. Does the proposed
amendment to the city charter impinge on your freedoms? Yes,
by allowing an individual’s personal interests to control while
overriding law. At the same time it places us ever more firmly
on the road to serfdom, a road we really don’t want to be on.

===================================

The problem with the state laws is that they lack the teeth of
explicit criminality, and political figures like Iron River's
mayor only seek to enforce laws that work somehow, in any
way, to their own advantage. We repeat, from our earlier
article, a quotation that seems not only appropriate, but worthy
of repetition because it remains true today for Iron County:

"It is not to be denied, that the leaders of the radical party
in the Gulf states since the Rebellion have many of them
been men of bad character, and without principle, and
that still more of them have been ignorant, and unused to
the exercise of political power."[1]

They flex their "power muscles" by making a big deal of fining
the owners of the Coast to Coast building demonstrating,
once again, that the City of Iron River is averse to all business
that is trying to make the local economic situation better. Is it
any wonder Iron River is such an economic failure? Why isn't
the city, and the Chamber of Commerce, taking steps to
encourage business coming into the city and the county?

Elected officials at all levels take an oath of office, but Iron
River's politicos have been very ignorant of what that means,
behaving instead as though they have inherited a local
fiefdom, and behave like a landlord of yesteryear instead
of an enlightened contributor to the local economy.


The city council minutes of 3/20/2013 have the following
information as the penultimate entry:

"Perlongo tendered his letter of resignation effective 9 a.m., 

Thursday, March 21, 2013 from the Iron River City Council. 

 Tarsi thanked Perlongo for his time in office."

What is omitted, of course, is the reason for the resignation.

The county prosecutor notified Mr. Perlongo that his holding

office concurrently with being the fire chief is prohibited by

state law. The present problem is that Perlongo's resignation

left unfinished business that the members of the city council 

have proven incompetent to resolve. If they cannot take

care of such a simple matter, what of more complex issues?

They've clearly proved themselves incapable of finding

reasonable resolution to those as well. Just look around you

in the city of Iron River. And while you're at it, take a look 

at the heating bill for city hall and ask yourself, "Why?"

Bill Vajk

[1] American Constitutional Decisions, Charles Fairman,
Henry Holt and Company, New York, 1948