Wednesday, Aug. 13, 2008 | If April Boling is disappointed with the Grantville settlement agreement, which sends $31.4 million of Grantville property tax downtown, why didn’t she speak up when it mattered?
This item was on the July 29 City Council agenda. A busload of us from Grantville and Allied Gardens came down to this meeting to be heard. In an obvious political maneuver, the Grantville item was put off until the end of what was one of one of the longest City Council meetings of the year. Most of us, including Marti Emerald, stayed to express our opposition to this dubious agreement. We even stayed to be called names by the current District 7 Councilmember. Where was April?
Those of us who couldn’t stay put in speaker slips in opposition and ceded time to those who would speak. District 1 candidate Sherri Lightner stayed until the end and ceded time to me, so I could speak for more than two minutes. Sherri doesn’t have an axe to grind one way or the other on the Grantville issue, other than doing what’s right. April was at City Hall that day. We saw her. Couldn’t she have done the same as Sherri?
A few days later I thanked Marti for coming to the meeting, speaking and staying until the end. She replied “I couldn’t leave when all of you folks were staying.” Later we heard that April left, because she had to go to a meeting. Or, did she leave, because she didn’t want Jim Madaffer to label her a “small-town undertaker” with the rest of us?