THE SPECTATOR: SHAME, SHAME, SHAME!

  

Ladies, ladies, ladies….what are you doing?  All of a sudden, the Washington County Republican Women seem to have lost their senses.  Last week, this organization began running ads suggesting that people vote “no” to all of the proposed City of Brenham charter amendments.  The reasons given by the Washington County Republican Women are that “the public was not informed of the proposed changes in a timely manner, that the proposed amendments are contradictory and confusing, that they raise salaries yet decrease duties, and that they place power in the hands of one person.”  Their ad concludes with the question “Where did these proposals come from?”.

All of those statements are blatantly false, and the Washington County Republican Women should know that.  This organization’s mission statement says “We encourage Republican women to run for office and our party feels it’s important to inform our members and the electorate through political education.  We believe all issues are local issues, and that it is critical to have informed voters!”.  If that is true, how did these women just realize there were charter amendments included in this election?  There have been numerous public meetings about them over the past eight months, and the City Council discussed them many times before placing them on the ballot.  In fact, a current City Councilmember talked about them at a recent meeting of The Washington County Republican Women.  When Sandie Kindt, the chairman of the Washington County Republican Party and an officer of the Washington County Republican Women was reminded about that, her only response was “free speech works both ways”.  Huh?

It's extremely disappointing that an organization, whose sole purpose for being is about government and local political issues, would act as if this charter amendment election was kept a secret.  It’s even more disappointing that they would try to mislead the public into thinking these amendments could raise taxes.  On the City of Brenham website, each of the amendments is fully explained, and shows if there is any budget impact.  The only one that affects the budget, and by only $19,500, is the increase in the salaries of the Mayor and Councilmembers.  If you don’t agree with that, then don’t vote for it.  But for these women to try to tell people to vote “no” to all of the amendments because they haven’t had time to study them is just absurd.  Most of the amendments are about cleaning up grammatical errors or bringing the City up to date with state and federal laws.  An important one is imposing term limits on the mayor and council of only three consecutive terms.  I strongly urge the citizens of Brenham to disregard these untruths from the Washington County Republican Women and do your own homework.  It’s really not that hard to do.  And that’s the way it looks to this Spectator.