The Wilmington City Council passed the budget for the next fiscal year — 7-6. Other than the 600K that Bud Freel made sure got added to deal with cameras and to be sure that the WPD could run an Academy if needed, this City Council passed a budget utterly free of any opportunity for asking for better accountability from the Williams Administration and utterly free from dealing with the big issues the city has: improved safety, accountability for programs and departments and a better reckoning of a projected surplus — $2M surplus even though this fiscal year will end with a $500K deficit.
If you live in Wilmington, here are the Councilpeople who could not be bothered to represent you this evening:
Darius Brown
Sherry Dorsey
Sam Prado
Hanifa Shabazz
Bob Williams (who told WDEL that the “administration gets a pass this time”)
Justin Wright
Theo Gregory
Look at that list. This is mostly a group of people who think they are running for a higher office in 2016 and somehow think that they can do that without paying attention to the people they need to represent. City Council President Gregory is particularly galling here, telling people during the vote tonite that he thought that some of the NO vote discussion was indicative of a gross lack of faith in the administration and saying that the budget process was not the right place to have these discussions of change. Which ought to outright disqualify Gregory for any other office — because the City Council does not have much power except at the budget process. They had a really big hand here and they refused to play it. It is malpractice, really — demonstrating a complete lack of political courage to make sure that the citizens have at least one functional part of government.
So nothing changes. The City Council can’t rouse themselves to govern on your behalf. And when they complain about the Administration (and they will) ask them why they voted for this budget. Heartbreaking. Hanifa Shabazz wants to be Council President, so this vote tells you what kind of leadership she’ll bring to the office. ZERO. NONE. She’ll be rubber stamping whatever comes before her too. Darius Brown wants to be Treasurer and he did not advocate for better cost control, better management or even demand to understand how the surplus projection was made. Bob Williams just votes for everything that Willams puts out as does Dorsey. Wright seems to want to run for Council President too, so you can look at this as a preview of what his work will look like. Sam Prado has simply checked out and hasn’t been concerned about representing his District in almost 2 years. Most of them spend more time tending to their Facebook pages than they did in the important governing work needed here.
The Good Guys (voting NO):
Bud Freel
Loretta Walsh
Maria Cabrera
Nnamdi Chucwocha
Mike Brown
Trippi Congo
Wilmingtonians deserve so much better than this. So much better than this.