[Vision2020] Daily News Editorial: Hypocrisy reigns on new Moscow council

[AreaMan (DanC)]

OUR VIEW: Hypocrisy reigns on new Moscow council

Virginia Henderson, for the editorial board


Step out of the fantasy and consider the downtown Moscow zoning debate
without the characters that populate this modern-day fairy tale of
wicked ogres and white knights masquerading as regular townsfolk. 
Pretend there are no rabid "intoleristas," no evil NSAers, no liberals
or conservatives. 

Stripped of rhetoric, the people driving the action are just people. But
each sees the question of allowing New Saint Andrews College to remain
downtown through a different lens. 

These views demand respect. Absent that respect, the city becomes a
battleground in which the soldiers, blinded by the cause, cease to see
the "others" as anything but the enemy. 

Words like tolerance and diversity ring hollow when people elected to
city government try to cheat the public process. That almost happened at
Monday's Moscow City Council meeting when new Councilman Aaron Ament,
mere minutes after he was sworn in, demanded a vote on a moratorium on
educational institutions downtown be thrust before the new council. 

In this mad dash, the council was split, onlookers were shocked and the
new mayor cast a vote that mocked the mandatory 15-day time set aside
for public comment. 

While the mayor eventually reversed her vote, the action was a slap in
the face to those who gave public comment and volunteers who worked
diligently toward a workable solution. While a fresh council has the
right to reconsider issues and is expected to make its own decisions,
this clumsy act was a blatant disregard for the process. The call for a
moratorium, supposedly reserved for emergencies, was a thinly disguised
weapon. 

A bunch of people who are mad they didn't get their way does not
constitute an emergency. Or does it? If they now are running the city
there is cause for alarm. The proposed law that took a year to hammer
out doesn't grant New Saint Andrews and other educational institutions a
blank check to operate downtown. A conditional-use permit was built into
the proposal, and that process includes public hearings where the plan
can be challenged. 

It's unconscionable to pull a power play when the opportunity for
healing and rebuilding is ripe. This attempt to bulldoze over the public
process is the worst kind of hypocrisy. 
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