Paul Clark Takes His Revenge
For the second time in a month, New Castle County Executive Paul Clark has replaced a longtime member of the Planning Board who has a history of objecting to Paul Clark’s development projects.
This time it was Victor Singer, the board chairman for the last 13 years. Last time it was 16 year veteran Mark Weinberg, who believes the fact that he opposed many developers represented by Paul Clark’s wife, Pam Scott, led to his outser.
Clark says he is not getting revenge, rather he is being civic minded because Planning Board members should have term limits.
“It is my belief that these appointments should not be life terms and that other qualified people should be given the opportunity to serve,” Clark said. “When you’ve been on these boards for several years, you wind up becoming the professional and not the citizen, and these are citizen boards.”
How nice of Mr. Clark. He is so civic minded. The problem is, with planning boards, you want long time community experience represented on the board rather than lap dogs for the developers who are ready to approve every project.
Why would long time members of the board be less likely to be lap dogs of developers than short term members? My intuition is just the opposite. What am I not getting about this?
That’s a good point, Dana. I suppose my read on this is specific to this situation where the longterm members who Clark outsed were opposed to many of Clark’s development projects. Which makes Clark’s insistence that revenge was not his motivation look disingenious at best.
Dana, you really have to read the Board’s deliberations and reports or visit them in action to get a feel for what it takes to do a good job here. You need the experience on the Board. Vic Singer did an enormous amount of work on the projects brought before this Board and I don’t think that too many of the members will carry on at that level of proficiency. That aside, your point is reasonable in a general way.
I certainly don’t trust Clark’s motivations any more than you do. But divorcing the situation from Clark, my intuition is that long time board members are more likely to be subject to the wooing of developers than short term ones. But in this situation it might be useful to discover if Clark replaced the longest two serving members on the board. If he didn’t, his pretext would be exposed.
DelDEM is correct in that Clark dug himself into the inescabable perception that this is paybacks.
Vic Singer, for instance, has made a point at almost every meeting from Dec. 2010 to July 2011 of challenging the Clark Land Use GM on where his annual report for the Comprehensive Plan was and when it would be submitted.
The report is mandated by law in state and county code. Clark began his Comp Plan Update in Dec. without having anything in writing that clarified what the county’s future plans were relative to the past plans’ success or failure as the law dictates he must provide. His people were incredibly childish and resentful at being asked to follow the law. The report was finally submitted a few weeks ago.
We (the Civic League) had to go to the legislature and State Planning Office to finally get the laws clarified so that Clark’s people would be forced to follow the law.
You can bet that Clark was PISSED at Vic Singer.
Dana, June McArter ASKED to be let off the Board but Clark is holding her on and guess what, she is fairly consistently voting “his way”.
Theoretical question of the day: Would Paul Clark be easier to take if he were a better liar?
I like my liars to be transparent. I prefer to confine guessing the moves people make to the chessboard.
Vic Singer’s been one of the good guys for decades, on land use and other issues.
A system of checks and balances should have a place here. There either needs to be an opportunity for the Council to review the appointment (de-appointment) or a public hearing process for the elimination or replacement of board members.
This is the second big revenge move on the park of Clark, and the second show of true arrogance in his willingness to do it with no regard for public questions and the appearance of impropriety.
Nobody likes a bully.