By Graham Trask
The decision making of our Beaufort City Council members proves their collective ability to stand for nothing! Our City Council will not even stand up in support of one of its own, Councilmember Josh Scallate, who himself tried to stand up against Scott Marshall, the City Manager, in response to Marshall’s blatant insubordination.
Our City Council refuses to stand up to Dominion Energy as it butchers our landmark trees — the same butchering City Council allowed five years ago. City Council moans “nothing can be done.” The truth, however, is that no will exists for action.
City Council refuses to stand up for 12-year-old girls whose rape kits, among 20,000+ pages of other sensitive data, have been publicly released. This data breach has been “under investigation” for a year now. Any “progress”, however, is discussed in myriad, secret executive sessions while the public remains in the dark.
Attempting to “clean up” the data breach to protect itself from liability, the City has implored innocent bystanders to sign legal documents shielding the city from legal liability and erroneously threatened that those same individuals will have legal liability if they don’t sign the documents. Where are the results of the so called “investigation” and why is the city trying to protect itself prior to releasing the “investigation” results?
Beyond the confidential information released in the data breach itself, many of the 20,000+ pages of unredacted documents reveal atrocious mismanagement and ineptness endemic to our city government and specifically in our police department to include mishandling evidence. Even you will be horrified at the extent of the mismanagement! Also, defense lawyers may want to pay attention as such evidence mishandling could provide avenues to reopen prior criminal convictions.
Councilman Scallate understands the gravity of the data breach as he has read the documents; Scott Marshall understands the gravity of the data breach even though he has a) denied receiving them (he has, however, received them) and b) denied viewing the documents; If in fact what he says is true and he has not read the documents, Marshall has committed unconscionable gross negligence. Without knowledge of what’s in the documents, Marshall cannot control the damage, meaning for the past year no damage control has occurred.
You, council members, refuse to stand up for our Henry C. Chambers Waterfront Park by ignoring preventative maintenance for decades and failing to set aside money to replace the park. Instead, millions of dollars were spent on a separate, extravagant park. Millions more dollars were given to developers to build speculative warehouses in the failed commerce park. All is discussed in secret, executive sessions so the public is kept in the dark.
You enable Scott Marshall to mismanage our city, alienate residents, and thumb his nose at you, his bosses. Marshall knows you won’t fire him; it’s why he continues with his egregious behaviors.
You, council members, refuse to hold Marshall accountable for his mismanagement of TIFF money resulting in our city losing access to millions of dollars – money which could have contributed to rebuilding our Waterfront Park.
You refuse to hold Marshall accountable for his heavy handedness with at least one black employee contributing to, it appears, that same employee’s resignation. You’ve seen the exit interviews. You know what happened.
You refuse to hold Marshall accountable for taking every bit of feedback personally and his fatal flaw of lashing out at those who give him feedback. He repeated such behavior at council’s Tuesday, July 7th meeting, by blasting and attempting to discredit Amanda Patel in response to her public comment. Just watch the video recording.
Unbelievably, you shower Scott Marshall with 5-star performance reviews and increase his salary as your misplaced monetary approval of his job performance.
Are you blind?
You, council members, refuse to solve and settle lawsuits and instead allow them to grow and attract further lawsuits. And you do nothing. You each individually and collectively offer excuses as to why “your hands are tied” or how “you are powerless” or how “you have no legal basis for action” or “blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.”
Doing what’s right requires moral rectitude; it requires a backbone; it requires a belief; it requires doing something good with the power that one has. It does not mean “shrugging ones shoulders”; saying “Well, I’m only one of five council members”; or I’m “only the mayor”; or we/I am “powerless.”
Beaufortonians are finally fed up.
You, City Council, can no longer hide on the dais, behind the “power” of the city, and in executive session. Your inaction has finally caught up with you, and you will be held accountable, as will Scott Marshall, for your individual and collective actions of inaction, lack of transparency, refusal to represent your constituents, and refusal to hold Marshall accountable for his incompetence, missteps, and insubordination.
You have lost our trust and have allowed our city government to devolve into a state of dysfunction and stasis. This stasis will only change when our citizens act at the ballot box and elect a majority on City Council who will stand up for what’s right. Only then will Scott Marshall be excised from our city.
Mark my word — we’ll get our city back on track. There is no alternative.
Graham B. Trask grew up in Beaufort and continues to be a resident of Beaufort. He owns a home in Beaufort’s landmark historic district. He also owns several businesses as well as residential and commercial real estate located throughout the City of Beaufort and specifically in the historic district. He adds value to almost 50 different resident business owner tenants to help them grow their enterprises. He is also the president of Protect Beaufort Foundation, Inc., and Beautiful Beaufort Open Land Trust. Contact him at Graham@grahamtrask.com.