Editor’s Note: A video of the Candidate Roundtable will be posted on our website tomorrow morning.

COMMENTARY

MARK SCHUMANN

About his friend Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson observed, “He did not feel himself except in opposition.”

Emerson’s assessment of his fellow Transcendentalist appears in a fair, frank and candid eulogy.  “He was a speaker and actor of truth, born such, and was ever running into dramatic situations for their cause.”

“His (Thoreau’s) virtues, of course, sometimes ran into extremes,” Emerson added.

I was thinking of Thoreau yesterday evening as Vero Beach City Council candidate Brian Heady abruptly walked away from a Roundtable Discussion held at the Heritage Center. Beginning with his opening remarks, it was obvious Heady’s only motive for being there was to score points and win votes.  For example, when asked what he considered to be key to the quality of life in Vero Beach, Heady flashed a picture of himself being removed from the lecturn at City Hall during public comment time.

Heady has and always will have his own agenda, and though he may have accepted an invitation to participate in a discussion about what local government can and should do to  preserve the quality of life in Vero Beach, it quickly became obvious he accepted a seat at the table, not to contribute to an elevated discussion about the future of Vero Beach, but to pick a fight, mostly with Tracy Carroll.  For her part, though, Carroll wasn’t even there.  In fact, Carroll was the only candidate who was in town yesterday but who chose not to attend the Candidate Roundtable.

The Vice Mayor did, however, manage to show up later in the evening for a debate/pep rally staged largely for her benefit by the island weekly.

Just before Heady stormed away from the Roundtable Discussion, I had asked the candidates a question about the morale of City employees. Rather than addressing the subject, Heady, for at least the fourth time during the evening,  returned to his opening complaint, which was that he had recently been “invited” away from the lecturn during comment time for making what Mayor Craig Fletcher believed to be unnecessarily personal attacks on Tracy Carroll.  (SEE PREVIOUS STORY)

My hunch is that Carroll avoided the Candidate Roundtable because she does not want the public to know her vision for Vero Beach’s future includes unlimited short-term rentals, commercial development of the remaining undeveloped waterfront property, and all things Ft. Lauderdale.

Heady avoids any serious discussion about the city’s future because he is stuck in complaint mode, and really has no vision for where he would lead the city or how he would participate in the kind of coalition building without which nothing of substance or lasting value can be accomplished.

Fortunately for the voters of Vero Beach, there are four other candidates in the race for two seats on the City Council: Amelia Graves, Joseph Guffanti, Warren Winchester and Richard Winger.  Votes need not be wasted on Heady, who has no vision for the city’s future, or on Carroll, who has no appreciation for the many decades of hard work and wise stewardship that are the foundation of the fine community to which she and other opportunists have recently been drawn.