“Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
(Lord Acton, Letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton, 1887)
Corruption, as Lord Acton meant, means the acquiring and possessing power for the wrong purposes; that is, for the wrong purpose of internal personal gratification that its exercise affords in imposing one’s own personal agenda; and seeing oneself as master of the people, rather than public servant to the people.
Since 2000, Mayor Sue McCloud’s most egregious acts include, as follows:
• Violations of State and Municipal laws ex. sale of the Flanders Mansion property, removal of historic resources from the City's Inventory of Historic Resources as a group, installation of 80 lights in the Ocean Av. medians.
• Underfunding and Understaffing City Departments ex. Fire Department, Community Planning and Building Department, Forest, Parks and Beach Department, Pubic Works Department, Library.
• Secretive contracts with consultants ex. appellate attorney, annexation and zoning consultant.
• Unilaterally disbanding of Commissions when their agendas conflicted with the mayor’s agenda ex. Community & Cultural Commission, Community Traffic Safety Commission, Carmel Art Board.
• Installation of Sunset Cultural Center, Inc. (SCC) as manager of the Sunset Center without the support and consent of Carmelites.
• Instigation of the creation of a Business Improvement Distract (aborted), institution of city-wide paid parking (aborted) and imposition of a Storm Water Drainage Utility Fee which originally was $500,000 of which $250,000 was to be diverted to the General Fund (abandoned after NO vote of property owners).
Moreover, Mayor Sue McCloud has compromised the media, her supporters and city employees.
• The Media: The local print media has either ignored Mayor McCloud’s announcement of running for a fifth term, thereby implying her reelection is inevitable and there is no reason to inform Carmelites about her record and the issues facing the City (The Monterey County Herald) or employed the rhetoric of intimidation to dissuade Carmelites from running against Mayor Sue McCloud and her City Council appointees (The Carmel Pine Cone).
• Supporters: Her supporters have voted for Sue McCloud based of a cult of personality, not on a record of positive accomplishments.
• City Employees: City employees, individually and collectively, fail to be accountable to Carmelites, the least of which is their failure to directly answer questions posed to them from members of the public.
Finally, in her eight years as mayor of Carmel-by-the-Sea, Sue McCloud has projected a sense of entitlement to mayoral term after mayoral term after mayoral term as if her goal in government is permanent control over Carmelites. And she has a record of pursuing the wrong agenda for the City of Carmel-by-the-Sea and Carmelites.
8 comments:
It has always appeared that the main reason Sue McCloud sought public office in Carmel was for her personal gratification. Secondarily, she seems to have wanted to put her rather extreme political philisophy into practice. Following these urges and allowing the means to justify the ends has led to ongoing negative impacts on both the business and residential communities. Residents and business people have become afraid of McCloud and the lengths to which she will go to get back at anybody she believes opposes her. She has been motivated, as far as anyone can tell, by wanting to be a medium size frog in a small puddle and has let nothing stand in her way no matter who and what is made to suffer.
Anyone, who has watched Sue McCloud at all, has noticed that she seems determined to leave a legacy of some kind so that after she has left politics and after she is gone forever she will be remembered fondly. Many people right across the political spectrum believe that in her mind they are the same thing. In addition to what McCloud has done to Carmel, for which she somehow thinks people, other than the relative few who share her worldview, will acclaim her, McCloud has several other expensive irons in the fire that she hopes will burnish her image e.g. an art museum to house her art collection as well as art the city owns and the Sunset Center. The Sunset Center, of course has turned out to be a disaster for Carmel and for its traditional users and presenters. It also is costing about $1,500,000 a year in city revenues. If she is remembered at all,it will most likely be for the damage she has done to Carmel and the years and dollars it has taken to fix as much of the damage as is reparable. We may count ourselves lucky that not all of her schemes to get rid of what has made Carmel unique have so far come to fruition.
There is little we can do about this sad state of affairs except inform and warn others about what is really going on in our village. Of course, if Carmelites could muster some courage, we can vote her out of office ASAP or pass term limits for the city council. Sadly, Carmelites have allowed her to break the law, use fabricated excuses as the means, and repetitive terms in power as the end and the village as primarily a residential city the victim of her personal whims.
Sue McCloud gives a bad name to conservatives and Republicans when she utters phrases which show she fails to understand the proper role of local government. Even fiscal conservatives who favor fiscal discipline at all levels of government realize that governments should concentrate on their core duties, such as spending taxpayer dollars on essential requirements and services, not nonessential items like the Sunset Center.
Every time Sue says the city has to have 60%. 70%, 80% or higher reserves because of state and local laws, she fails to mention the fact that the council can change and adjust all of the self-imposed council mandates, if they exist at all. One never knows when Sue is telling the truth, shading the truth or just covering up the truth with so many misleading statements.
Mayor Sue finds taxpayer dollars for tourist marketing, but fails to maintain everything tourists use when they get here, like another much needed restroom at the beach. Meanwhile, residents get nothing for their taxpayer dollars.
It is amazing Sue McCloud can oversee the under funding of the Fire Dept. and the over funding of Sunset Center. The under funding of the Planning Dept. and the over funding of the county housing trust. The under funding of Forest & Beach Dept. and the over funding of consultants for tree removal. The under funding of capital improvements and the over funding of lawyers and lawsuits. And the list goes on and on.
Mayor Sue likes to put on airs that she knows everything and is an expert on everything and can tell everyone what to do, but she is short on real knowledge and wisdom. Just look at her predisposition to circumvent the law all together in order to put her agenda into effect. She must not have any respect for her constituents with those kinds of acts. She left Carmel to enter the federal bureaucracy and came back to Carmel with a haughty attitude of indispensability and being too clever by half.
Everyone here likes to complain, and that is valuable. But what are you doing about it? Have you shown this site to your friends? Your neighbors? Having the media, especially the Pine Cone - Carmel's Pravda - in collusion with Sue makes it all the more important for people to start getting the word out.
Complaining..."it is eseential to elect a new mayor because the city is not being well served"...translated into action...vote for the non-incumbent candidate Dogman McBill is a course of action voters can take to reclaim our village. Every resident should be able to run this city for a 2 year period with active citizen involvement and just being mayor doesn't necessarily make you competent at the job.
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