On Wednesday, November 16th, Irving's City Council held their regularly scheduled work session. According to the work session agenda, the first item up for discussion was the "review of regular agenda" in preparation for Thursday's City Council meeting. Mayor Van Duyne started the work session by moving up the discussion on ethics, trust and transparency.
The topic on ethics and transparency is very important to the mayor which was among her campaign promises while running for election this past summer.
After the ethics discussion, the Mayor attempted to discuss the first item on the agenda which was initially skipped. Council member Rose Cannaday objected, "I'm going to ask that we go ahead and go to the entertainment venue because we have people here who have to catch planes today and we did not get to hear from them last time. I would like to have a full presentation."
Cannaday was referring to a presentation on the controversial financing of the $250 million Las Colinas entertainment center.
The mayor insisted rather rudely, "I have people that I've told we were going to do the agenda first, so I know those people are getting paid to be here... so we are going to move on to the regular agenda."
Cannaday did not back down, "I'm going to have to object, because you're one vote and I think you need a consensus of the Council."
After an argument on what the charter permits the mayor to do while presiding, the mayor adjourned the meeting for a 15-minute break to "explain to the gentle council woman the charter" and abruptly left; leaving Cannaday speaking. The break lasted close to an hour while the mayor remained out of the room.
"This has been done before in the last meeting and the Council had asked the people speak; and they were not allowed to speak at that time. I was silent because I didn't know exactly what the charter said, but I got a reading from an attorney and it states," said Cannaday, " that the mayor has one vote, and she’s not given as many powers as she would like and five us [council members] can move along the agenda."
Cannaday then said that the mayor is against the project and that is why the mayor did not want to go into that discussion.
Other council members supported Cannaday’s assertion that the matter should be moved ahead of Thursday’s agenda items. Council member Dennis Webb, Roy Santoscoy and Lewis Patrick went on the record in support of Cannaday's view.
After Mayor Van Duyne returned she seemed surprised, "This is unprecedented; we do not have procedures set for running meetings."
Van Duyne then suggested that, in the interest of moving forward and having a spirit of cooperation, the council go through Thursday’s agenda items before focusing on the entertainment center. What is amazing is that the mayor seems to believe that having the "spirit of cooperation" means doing things her way only.
Cannaday suggested a 15-minute limit be put on the discussion of Thursday’s agenda. City Manager Gonzalez agreed.
After this, the work session was able to finally move forward.
