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Buena Vista City Council meetings are for conducting the city’s business – not for touting one’s candidacy for political office. That’s a message that was delivered loudly and clearly by Buena Vista Mayor Bill Fitzgerald at last week’s City Council meeting.
Fitzgerald, who is not running for reelection this year, called out three candidates who did a bit of political posturing at the previous July 20 Council meeting. The mayor apologized for not stepping in and putting a halt to the grandstanding when it was happening. In his remaining months of chairing Council’s meetings, he promised to step in, to even adjourn the meetings early, if he had to, to put an end to candidates using Council meetings for pursuing political agendas.
“During Council meetings is not the proper place for people to be making political speeches,” Fitzgerald explained later. “I don’t want to see their posturing and all. They’ll have different opportunities to do that – Labor Day and the chamber forum. Go door to door. I made it clear to all candidates that I won’t tolerate that. I’ll shut the meetings down if I have to.”
He advised candidates to attend the meetings to educate themselves about how to conduct the city’s business. “When you come to a Council meeting, sit down and listen. Try to learn. That’s what benefited me. I went to a lot of Council meetings before I was even on the School Board.” (Fitzgerald was elected to and served on the Buena Vista School Board prior to being elected to City Council. Later, he was elected mayor.)
One of the candidates to which Fitzgerald was referring announced at the July 20 Council meeting that she was planning to hold a “festival/ rally” at Glen Maury Park this fall that would be a benefit for Rockbridge Recovery and that she had invited former President Donald Trump to attend. When word got out about what she had said, a spokesperson for Rockbridge Recovery, a new 501-3c nonprofit entity that provides services for recovering addicts, was quick to disassociate the nonpartisan organization from any such political activities.
Fitzgerald is correct. There is a time and place for everything, and City Council meetings are not an appropriate forum for political posturing. There are plenty of appropriate forums for such activities. In a similar vein, this newspaper’s letters to the editor is not a forum for anyone to advance their own candidacy. Letter writers can tout the candidacies of others but declared candidates cannot write such letters themselves.
We are encouraged by the interest that is being shown in this fall’s elections. There are 43 candidates whose names will be on local ballots for 34 local elective offices, including three seats in the General Assembly that encompass reconfigured districts. This newspaper will be profiling all of the candidates and will be providing coverage of the forums featuring these candidates.
We are expecting a spirited campaign that will enlighten all of us about the issues of the day and advance the cause of democracy. We urge candidates to follow the advice of Buena Vista’s mayor to tout their candidacies in all of the appropriate forums that are available.
