This letter is in response to Richard Agee’s letter to the editor, (“Objects to leadership changes for PCPB panel,” June 12 Beacon, page 6).
Those who attended the May 15 meeting of the Peninsula Community Planning Board (PCPB) and witnessed the non-agenda public speakers would have recognized it was Morning Star [PCPB Airport Committee chair Suhail Kahlil] alone who was the “spectacle” and not the public nor the PCPB chair Chuck Mellor or the board. It was overwhelmingly obvious.
The board may be appropriately criticized for taking no action at all in the face of an overwhelming shout to that effect by those community residents who dramatically addressed the board and asked (no one objected or spoke in opposition) for one board member to step down or be removed, but the entire subject was spontaneous, unplanned (and unplanned for), and simply part of the non-agenda, public comment part of the meeting, as far as the board knew.
In short, it was “not an action item” on the agenda and due to parliamentary procedures and basic due process considerations, the desired board action would have been ruled entirely out of order had anyone said peep at that time in support of the public outcry. In short, the votes were not there and could not be there, procedurally. No one had otherwise lobbied the board or prepared the board members in any way that I am aware of.
My use of the term “spectacle” in the notes [I] sent out as “OTHER MINUTES”Notes From the Non-Agenda Public Comments” was drawn from Morningstar’s [Kahlil’s] own defiant, Portia-like use of the term that evening and in an e-mail message he sent the next morning in which he repeated his “spectacle” rant language three times in one short paragraph ” repeatedly misusing the term in a continuing, disguised attempt to divert attention from himself to the board, to the chair, to anyone else. If mocking is mimicking someone else’s words or behavior, the “Other Minutes” document mocks Morningstar [Kahlil], not the public. My apology to anyone who thought otherwise.
That said, it remains that nothing said in the notes should reflect on the chair or the board in general in any official way other than what the speakers reflected in their comments, even if Mr. Agee thinks so. The “Other Minutes” are merely my notes reflecting what speakers said and not minutes of the board. Maybe they are opinionated in some way, but I can attest that they actually do reflect the opinions of the public speakers, word for word, syllable by syllable. And true no matter which or what the “spectacle.”