Mayor and Council:
I write to express my support for those of you who may be motivated to replace the current vice mayor and the members of the Personnel Committee. I have heard a number of voices in the community who share my desire for a vice mayor interested in playing for “Team Portsmouth” rather than “Team Me/Myself/and I”. Regarding the Personnel Committee, I believe the public would be better served by people not pursuing the goal of remaking our boards and commissions in their own images but in reflecting the community as a whole with its diversity of demographic characteristics and perspectives. Additionally, I have seen convincing evidence that the current Personnel Committee has treated a number of commissioners/board members who were eligible, qualified, and willing to accept reappointment inequitably by not offering them subsequent terms. The people who donate their time and talents to our city deserve our thanks, not indifference or antagonism from the selection committee. If reappointment is an option within the defined term limits, and an incumbent has been attending meetings and performing other required duties conscientiously, he/she/they should be reappointed as a matter of course.
Please make your selections Tuesday [January 3, 2023] with those precepts in mind.
Yours truly,
Mark Geduldig-Yatrofsky
Excellent points, PCW! Board and commission seats should not be used as rewards for personal loyalty to those in power and/or as a means for certain council members to control what happens on those boards and commissions. Our new city council needs to assign seats based on qualifications and demographics across the city. Here’s hoping!
Appointments to committees should be judged first by the qualfications a direction that a candidate is willing to or has show serving on a committee. Qualified persons are the most difficult thing to find for public commissions that pay nothing, and demand tremendous commitment and courage a member truly speaks their mind and does not us sit on a board or commission for silly or personal reasons, but actually can contribute and advance or retard government in the public interest is golden. A candidate willing to speak in the public interest with unassuming and a complete lack of personal interest, who will put his foot down to corruption, stupidity, and private and political shenanagans and be a watchdog to administrative departments. these things are difficult to find in individuals but should be of great importance to Council members in making appointments. Committee members are a link between the people and the Council and should be willing to step down like members of a Parliamentary Cabinet to show displeasure with the Council, its policies that affect their duties, or if there is corruption on a committee or board. Municipalities like PRHA and the PEDA are municipalities with limited sovereign immunity like the City, but the City is a republican form of government, while these municipalities are not! Therefore their boards and commissions have a great responsibility to the public and to Federal and State funds and grants and to protect the seizure and acquisition of private property, in which citizens have little recourse to the courts for relief or abuse. Likewise, these municipalities on the one hand are involved in the welfare of large groups of citizens at the bottom of the economic ladder in their support, while on the other is involved with corporate capitalists and developers, and both municipalities are in bed with each other. This creates a condition that demands individuals on their oversight organizations who are “appointed” to be particularly dutiful, knowledgeable, considerate and passionate, fearless, and suspicious of all matters involving the organization and willing to stand up and speak out in their duty to the citizens and public funds. They are the only check on serious corruption and abuse in two of the most powerful and unchecked organizations in the city, whose funds and expenses have no republican oversight.