Williston businesswoman Sharon Brannan asks the council to clean up the blighted Block 12 across from City Hall.

By Terry Witt – Spotlight Senior Reporter

            Williston Council President Charles Goodman offered his resignation Tuesday night after refusing to abide by Mayor Jerry Robinson’s request that he conform to a 2012 resolution calling for council members vote by a show of hands.

            Goodman said he is in charge of running the council meetings and he wasn’t going to allow the mayor, who isn’t a voting member of the board, tell him how to conduct meetings eight years after the resolution was adopted.

            The council president offered to resign if two members of the council were willing to ask him to leave the board, but no one took him up on the offer. The hand-raising debate continued.

            Goodman said he was aware one sentence in the resolution called for a show of hands on every council vote and he was also aware he had seconded a motion in 2012 to approve the resolution and had actually voted for it along with Councilman Elihu Ross.

            But that didn’t change the fact that he had the right to run the meetings as deemed appropriate.

            Goodman recalled that former council president, Nancy Wininger, used the hand-raising procedure to run her meetings last year, but he said in the previous seven years the issue hadn’t been mentioned. He said he didn’t know why Robinson dug up the resolution.  He said he offered to meet with Robinson but nothing happened.

            Goodman used a different procedure for taking votes at the meeting. When a verbal vote was taken he would announce whether it had passed or failed and would recount the margin of the vote. He said he saw no need for a show of hands, regardless of what the 2012 resolution states.

            “I’m not going to do it, I’m telling you. Have an impeachment; do what you want I’m not going to do it. That is the only job the council president does is to run the meetings and I’m not going to let the mayor tell me how to do it,” Goodman said.

            “The mayor is not trying to tell you how to do it,” Robinson responded. “The resolution is telling you how to do it.”

            After things settled down, the council followed the legal advice of City Attorney Fred Koberlein. The city attorney agreed to remove language from the resolution requiring a show of hands for voting. He will bring it back for consideration at the next board meeting.

            The council was quickly taken to task by resident Paula Jenkins for passionately debating the question of voting in board meetings and paying less attention to an issue raised earlier in the meeting about blighted downtown buildings.

            Jenkins had watched her first council meeting on a television set in the Gerald Hethcoat Community Center next door. Space was limited in the council chambers due to social distancing. She was offended when Robinson and Goodman began arguing about whether to vote by showing hands. She felt a higher calling for the board was getting rid of the downtown blight. The issue had been discussed earlier in the meeting by businesswoman Sharon Brannan.

             Brannan made an impassioned plea for the board to get rid of the blight in the downtown business district. She suggested pressure washing and painting the aging business buildings in Block 12 across from City Hall.

            The board listened quietly to Brannan and was about to move on to other business when Councilwoman Debra Jones piped up that she wanted Brannan’s suggestion added to the next council meeting agenda. The council agreed to make Brannan’s suggestion an agenda item.

            But Jenkins felt the council’s priorities were out of sync with what the community cared about most, the deteriorating looks of the old downtown business district.

            “I have to say I’m offended with the last conversation that’s just taken over 12 minutes and was the most impassioned conversation you’ve had all evening, and was about procedural rather than the blight we’re seeing in the city that so many citizens care so deeply about and want to help any way they can,” she said. “So I would appreciate it if you would focus your attention back on what’s really important for a council and that is taking care of the city you are supposed to be watching over.”

            Brannan said she had been reading Facebook comments from Williston residents questioning “why our city looks like this.” She said a council-approved plan to improve the looks of Block 12 has produced nothing.

            “If anything it looks worse,” she said.

            Brannan tossed out the idea of pressure washing the vacant businesses and possibly painting them as a first step toward improving the looks of Block 12.

            “You’re still staring across the street at this ugliness,” she said.

            She said Block 12 is an embarrassment to her and it should be for the council.

            “Just paint and pressure washing, it would go a long way,” she said.

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City of Williston Regular Meeting June 16, 2020; Posted June 16, 2020