The ceremonial event of entertaining a contingent of officials from Rzeszow, Poland and entering a sister city agreement with them took an unusual turn at Thursday’s City Commission meeting.
During public comment on the resolution to enter the agreement, opponents of the city’s biomass contract approached the podium to take issue with commissioners- as representatives from the Polish city stood and looked on.
Nathan Skop, a former Public Service Commission member and a 2012 candidate for City Commission, noted that Commissioner Randy Wells was a board member of the nonprofit organization that runs the local sister city program. He questioned why Wells did not disclose that and said he should recuse himself because of a conflict of interest.
Annie Orlando, a frequent speaker at Commission meetings, went to the podium and said Wells was a “benign” example of an “issue of process” with the Commission. Orlando, who has an active lawsuit against the city over a project that did not get selected for the solar feed-in tariff program, noted that Commissioner Susan Bottcher said during a Regional Utilities Committee meeting earlier in the week that her home was in the city’s solar net metering program. That program offers homeowners a discount on electric bills based on the amount of energy their solar array generates for the GRU system.
Orlando questioned if Bottcher should not recuse herself from votes on the net metering program.
“I believe that most of us have electricity in our homes so any time we would have a vote on a utility matter we would all have to recuse ourselves,” Mayor Craig Lowe said.
Commissioner Yvonne Hinson-Rawls criticized those who criticized commissioners.
“I don’t know when I’ve been more uncomfortable and embarrassed,” she said. “I think we’re acting like children. We need to be acting like adults.”
When Lowe asked Wells if he received any benefits as a board member of the nonprofit sister city program, Wells said “certainly not.”
He did recuse himself from the vote on the resolution “out of an abundance of caution.”