Why Should Edmond Get One but Not Guthrie?
Guthrie Man says: If Edmond is going to have a citizen revolt, then Guthrie needs one too.
According to Guthrie Man's weather gurus, there's more rain coming in today. In fact, they seem to think it will be a lot.
Those NewsChannel 4 news hit-and-runners are probably already starting their mobile news four, four-wheel-drive pickup truck and are headed northward to the news-producing, rained-out, soon-to-once-again-be-impassable dirt roads of Mark Sharpen's District 1.
Somehow, Sharpen managed to stay off camera a couple of weeks ago when the last decent rains came through soon followed by the news station. Maybe the Channel 4-ers can track him down this time.
Ahh, yes, impassable Logan County roads. It's really quite the conundrum that no one has solved before. Maybe that's because certain people don't want to solve it?
It wasn't too long ago when Sharpen was publicly dismissing those who thought that, instead of spending millions of dollars on an unneeded new county building, maybe, just maybe, there was a more pressing need in front of the taxpayers: roads.
Those millions of wasted dollars sure would have improved a lot of road surfaces. The next time those western Logan County drivers can't make it down their section line, maybe they will be comforted to know that the county officials will soon be moving into their nice, new, multi-million-dollar digs. Ahh, to be a fly on the wall if any of those poor stranded souls ever figure this out and ask Sharpen to elaborate on his previous comments.
Or maybe they could ask Sharpen if he was good with allowing the Excise Board to raid the money that was planned for the road district's general fund account but instead will now be paying for an unneeded new FTE down at the OSU Extension office. Of course, the video of that meeting hasn't been put up on The Guthrie News Page. That's really part of the problem: when the videographer is also a voting member of the Excise Board that's casting the votes.
Say what you want about Guthrie City Hall, but at least they are doing right by putting their videos out there for the public to see. In terms of transparency, Logan County commissioners are, well, you might say, stuck in the mud.
Alright, enough negativity from Guthrie Man. Maybe things will change with some new blood. Guthrie Man likes to be optimistic and believe the newcomer to the board will change all of this: bring a professional mindset to county government, put the money on the roads, put the meetings—all of the meetings—online for Guthrie Man to see, and generally stop trying to increase taxes, Charlie Meadows-style. So Guthrie Man is a fan of Floyd Coffman. Coffman can save us!
And remember, Guthrie Man is also a fan of about half of the Guthrie City Council and the new city manager, too.
That's because they are new, and they haven't yet shocked Guthrie Man's well-calibrated sensibilities.
But Guthrie Man has a penchant for supporting voter revolts. And Guthrie Man, as do all Guthrie men, never likes it when the rightful state capital city's southernmost suburb—known to Guthrie Man as Summit, but if you aren't also of the mindset that Santa Fe railroad tycoons shouldn't have the authority to name train stops after their own co-workers (let's talk about John Guthrie later)—then "Edmond," to you, gets to participate in something of significance whilst those who are viewed as their inferiors to the north do not.
At this point, Darrell Davis has to be thinking to himself: "Maybe, just maybe, ugly bow ties aren't a good luck charm after all." Guthrie Man doesn't know about you, but when a serious person is trying to raise your property taxes by 14%, it's bad. However, when it's a guy wearing a bright pink bow tie, it's time for a tea party.
Those Edmonites haven't been this worked up since the mid-90s when the cross-deniers watched the courts strike the cross from the city seal and then refused to allow the I-35 cross to be built in response.
North Edmond is absolutely crawling with angry suburbanites, loading their pitchforks and flaming torches into their freshly charged-up Escalade IQs and heading down to the election board on North Lincoln to file for the spring municipal elections.
Here's to their success. Government officials, not unlike garden soil, need turning over now and then to stay productive and responsive, and a good citizen revolt happens far less frequently than it should to ensure responsive, effective governance.
So, why can't Guthrie also have a good old-fashioned citizen revolt?
Why does Edmond get all of the good things in life?
As Guthrie Man sees it, there are three Guthrie councilmen who have long outlived their shelf life: Bothroyd, Taylor, and Gentling. Bothroyd and Gentling have been in since 2015, and Taylor well before that.
Council service should be a temporary thing. For those in Rio Linda: if these lifetimers can't make a difference after ten years, then it's time for some new blood, new ideas, and maybe some new councilmen who won't just blindly sign off on every big surveillance system plan being pushed by the guy in the city hall basement.
Taylor and Gentling are up for re-election. In December, citizens can file against them and potentially bring a fresh new perspective to the Council.
And if you could grant Guthrie Man a fleeting indulgence in uncharacteristic gravitas, just to recap, these are the same three city council people who have:
- Attempted to get the people to sign off on giving the council a 719,900 percent pay raise—needs context, but is not satire.
- Upon a motion by Bothroyd, and a second by Taylor, became one of, if not the first, governing body in the Western Hemisphere to forcefully mask their citizens—an absurd decision that history has already started to condemn, and a decision that Gentling doubled down on by allowing The New Yorker to use him, in their feature, to disrespect his own hometown.
- Stood by while the city police department supported and participated in an event in which a male gay nightclub performer performed, as his gay nightclub drag character, for children, on city-owned property. The police department posted video of the attending children and the department personnel giving animals to the children to play with, prior to the arrival of the gay nightclub performer. That footage appears to have since gone missing from the department's Facebook page. Close followers of independent journalist V1SUT will know about the associates of this particular performer, and at some point, it's expected that that full story will come into the public purview. Bothroyd used his council comments to declare "his support for the PRIDE group," and both Taylor and Bothroyd applauded left-wing religious leader John Borrego when, after the event, Borrego thanked the city council and the police department for "making this the joyous event that it was."
- On a motion by Taylor, and a second by Bothroyd, during the inflation apocalypse, pushed through a hotel/occupancy tax increase proposal in a tourism community, nonetheless—a new tax opposed by many of the local business owners who own those establishments.
- On a motion by Taylor, are moving forward with a new mobile app, funded by Oklahoma County ARPA funds for some strange reason—don't those fellows have a jail that needs fixing?—to be used by the Guthrie police department that will live on the citizens' smartphones, broadcasting data to the police, and require who-knows-what permissions from the user's device.
- Have "overseen" the multi-million Owens Field disaster, which is, in terms of raw scale, probably the greatest financial boondoggle in the history of this town.
. . . just to name a few.
If this were a deep blue state, then these fellows would be right at home.
But, of course, it's not.
So there's really only one reason these critters have been allowed to survive—politically speaking, of course—in these parts: citizens' inattention and apathy.
The question is, will this apathy continue? Let's hope not. Guthrie Man thrives off of citizen engagement, not citizen apathy and inattention. Now Guthrie Man knows a little bit about predicting the future: as woke starts to die away, history isn't going to be kind to these fellows; but neither will it look kindly upon the voters who allowed them to keep at their dastardly deeds. Elections are upcoming; Gentling is up for re-election, as is Taylor.
The defeat of these two, by two new, civically-minded, true Guthrites who understand what the people in this town really think, would completely change the character of this Council and potentially send Bothroyd into the purgatory of minority status, to await his potential defeat in two years. Any qualified candidate can run against Gentling, so long as they live in town. To run against Taylor, one needs to live south of Harrison and west of Pine, or between Harrison and Oklahoma, from the railroad tracks to Capitol Street.
They say the citizens get the government they deserve. This may not be true, but if you, Guthrie Man's reader, don't go down to the Logan County Election Board on December 2nd, 3rd, or 4th and fill out the simple, probably one-page form to sign up and fix the problem, then you, Guthrie Man's valued reader, will continue to receive what you do not deserve: a council that's more fitting of Berkeley, California, than our valued Guthrie.
Frankly, Guthrie Man can't take another two years of the Berkeley City Council having rule over our lives. Guthrie Man loves Guthrie and wants to preserve the town as it was given to us.
Do it for Guthrie Man!
I've been your host: Guthrie Man.