Loud and Clear - Janesville Taxpayers Lose In Shut-Out

Tweet

Monday night’s Janesville City council meeting was a meeting to remember. It's not like I expected the city council to deny the WHP group an alcohol license at the city's ice arena. One way or another, it was going to happen no matter if the council had to work into the morning hours. It's just the way the whole thing played out that was totally bizarre.

Now, to get a clear picture of the final vote tally for the alcohol license, you need to revisit the city council's decision on the ice arena lease contract. At the time, two council members were absent (Brunner and Loasching), so all the council members in attendance voted for the contract - beer sales and all - excluding Bill Truman. Perrotto was not a member of the council at the time, but he voiced his opposition to the beer sales during his campaign. Still, folks are entitled to change their minds over a period of a few weeks and I expected the license to go through anyways. Given that however, Truman opened the discussion with this statement.

Council Meeting
“You made it loud and clear you don’t want to share your revenues with us, so I think it should be loud and clear taxpayers shouldn’t pay for remodeling for you to sell your beer.” – Council Member Bill Truman

That was a very strong statement in defense of the working Janesville taxpayer and it reinforced his 'no' vote on the lease/beer sales contract from six weeks ago. So it would only seem more than logical that he would not have capitulated any more to an uncompromising party. But not only did Truman flip on the dime with that statement, the Janesville Gazette also shut out this important aspect of the discussion by not acknowledging Truman’s statement in their article covering the council’s decision. Yet, after having that statement completely ignored by the rest of the council and the WHP spokesman, Truman votes to okay the beer license! Truly bizarre.

In less than 30 minutes, he went from one end of the spectrum to the other. Whatever happened after he made the "loud and clear" statement could be left up to anyone’s imagination.

Truman’s flip-flopping on the hockey contract beer sales deal was enough to make John Kerry look like Old Ironsides. I've never seen anything quite like it.