"Dick's Picks?" (The Mystery Panelists...)

It's been nearly 5 months since our City has had an official Police Chief. Although it is one of the City Managers job duties to hire department heads, in this instance he has selected a panel of people to help him with the selection process. (This in itself is not that unusual.) It's been stated that the panel consists of 5 or 6 members. (Is it 5, or is it 6?) What is unusual is that it has not been made public to the community exactly who is on this panel, charged with the duty of helping select a new Chief. We are told that it consists of various members of the community, a "cross section" or "broad spectrum" per se, including a former City Commissioner, and a business owner. I talked with Commissioner Graham recently and asked if he knew of any of the panel members, he only knew of one. This particular person was not either of the aforementioned. This person however is one who at a commission meeting told one of the commissioners to "shut-up!", and was a contributor to another website with very derogatory comments toward the founder of the Citizens Advisory Committee. To try to get an answer as to who the citizens are that are on this panel, I phoned Commissioner Wood last week, who promptly returned my call and offered to review the previous minutes to see if they mentioned any names. The minutes did not reveal any names and Commissioner Wood had no idea who is on the panel either, she did however believe that the Mayor might be one of the panelists, nonetheless she has promised to make some inquiries into it for me. (Thank-You commissioner Wood.) I know the Ad Hoc Advisory Committee for E-911, and the Ad Hoc Aquatic Committee, are both comprised of citizens who's names have been made public, and coming up at tonight's commission meeting the Phoenix Project will have some names associated to it. So it seems when it comes to having an Ad Hoc committee to review the Police Chief applications (and according to the Pittsburg Morning Sun, "casting votes" in that selection process,) it is all being done by a secret, mystery panel of participants. Is this yet another "double standard" from the Commission? Remember these quotes from an article in the Pittsburg Morning Sun where the Mayor set out some rules for Ad Hoc committees formation?

"In a case of the surreal, Fort Scott Mayor Gary Billionis chastised one of the city's residents for trying to offer help to the commission earlier this week and suggested that the only way the commission would listen to public input was if it came from a sanctioned committee whose members were hand-picked by the commission."


"As an unsanctioned committee, we would not be responsive to that," Billionis replied. "Where did you obtain the authority to form a committee to advise this commission?"

Billionis said any ad hoc committee will be formed and sanctioned by the commission. In previous committees formed by the commission, all members have been nominated and all members were approved by the commission.

Hmmm. An Ad Hoc committee who's members are unknown to the commission, yet "casting votes?" I think it's funny that the City Manager for some reason doesn't feel comfortable picking a new Police Chief himself, yet he is "hand-picking the pickers" and seems to want to keep their identities a secret. I would think that if he were looking for a "broad cross-section" of the community then why would he look any farther than the City Commission itself, whom a cross-section of the community voted for? I wonder if any of the panelists he has selected have had documented support from a number of citizens of the community? The Citizens Advisory Committee is considered by some to be insignificant, the city has made every attempt to discredit, belittle and divide it's membership, yet there are members of the so-called "peanut gallery" who have received significant documented support from a true cross-section of the community, that being the voting public. Perhaps I can use my "three minutes" of allotted time at tonight's commission meeting to get the answer to my question.