COMMENTARY

MILT THOMAS

When you want people to accept your point of view on a subject, it is probably best not to start off by insulting them. That seemed to be the strategy two weeks ago and repeated last night at the Sebastian City Council meeting. During the public input portion of the meeting, Phyllis Fry, representing the county’s resident anti-Seven50 red shirts, began her presentation by saying if any of you believes Seven50 is going away because there was a three year expiration date on the consortium agreement signed by the City of Sebastian, “I suggest you find a tooth, put it under your pillow tonight and let me know how it works out for you.”

At the last City Council meeting two weeks ago, the first red-shirted speaker stormed up to the dais waving a stop watch and complaining that the previous speaker (on a different subject) had spoken more than the allotted five minutes. He then argued that moving the public input section was “a de facto attempt to silence most of the people who came to this session tonight and pay your salary.”

Their approach was the same at both of those meetings, plus the City Council meeting before that, when they dominated public input for nearly half an hour railing against the Council for continuing to participate in Seven50. They obviously wore their red shirts and angry demeanor as a show of solidarity, but they resembled a roused up but ill-informed street crowd rather than serious, intelligent citizens.

The insults continued as well as the ignorance of City rules for public input at Council meetings. Last night, another woman addressed the Council about everything that is happening in our country and we don’t trust anybody, “we don’t trust you…We’re not going to let things fly by like you have.”

Then a man stood and demanded the five Council members sign a piece of paper that they would have nothing to do with Seven50.

Mayor McPartlan then asked, “What would be the point?”

The man became agitated, glancing back at his fellow red shirts, then said, “It would be a legal binding piece of paper that says you will have nothing to do with Seven50.”

The mayor than asked if he had read the entire Seven50 document and he said no. “Then I would encourage you to read the entire document, not YouTube snippets.”

Unbelievably, the man asked again if they would sign it, to which the mayor said no.

The point here is not to debate the good and bad points about Seven50, but rather to suggest that insulting and demeaning public officials is hardly a direct route to their hearts and minds. Aside from the fact City Council has already dealt with the Seven50 issue and clearly has no interest in revisiting their decision, the angry red shirts are really not interested in debating the issue, only in telling Council what they should do. In essence, they are doing exactly what they claim Seven50 does – impose the will of unelected officials on local government.

I would suggest a group reading assignment. Possibly start with Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People. Then arrange for anger management therapy. Often anger is displaced, you know, like yelling at your spouse when it’s really because of your boss.

The Council did recommend to these people at the last two meetings, that they follow normal procedure and ask one of the Council members or City Manager to put it on the agenda a week ahead of time. Based on their insulting public performance though, I would be surprised if any Sebastian officials feel compelled to do them a favor.