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Good morning, Netizens…
One of my favorite slogans, particularly if the day isn’t getting itself properly attired and ready for another prosperous business day is, “It’s another wonderful day in Paradise”, typically spoken with a leer on my face, a mild-mannered form of non-verbal punctuation to the sentence being spoken. It seems that a person had a wonderful day in Paradise yesterday when he threatened to blow up City Hall when asked to sign himself in as a Guest.
Thomas D. McMillan ended up being arrested, charged with one count of threatening to bomb or injure property, a class B felony that prohibits threats against public buildings for his threat.
http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2009/may/14/spokane-man-accused-threatening-blow-city-hall/
Here comes my question: can you think of any circumstances, any justification at all under for making threats to blow up City Hall?
Remember, we ostensibly have a representative government, in which we as citizens gleefully elect at predictably sometimes-macabre occasions, and anyone can run for public office in Spokane if they wish. So long as Council President Joe Shogan does not rap his imperial gavel, anyone can remonstrate, disagree or express an opinion to the City Council during the public input component of the City Council meetings. Of course you can always write letters, because so few of the Council members seem to answer e-mail, based upon my experiences. I submit there are lots of alternatives one should consider before resorting to making threats to blow up City Hall, and I am curious whether anyone can come up with some good rationale for McMillan’s behavior.
Or was he just having another wonderful Day in Paradise that somehow got away from him in that he should have engaged his brain before opening his mouth?
Dave
999 W. Riverside, Spokane, WA 99201
P.O. Box 2160, Spokane, WA 99210
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lewis8457 on May 15 at 9:12 a.m.
He is lucky he didn’t get tasered for good measure.
Maybe he had written a hundred letters to Verner with no response and he was upset by that I could maybe understand his anger, but in Spokane? He took his life into his hands making such a stupid mistake.
I find it frustrating that city hall has no communication skills but would never be stupid enough to say something like that to a city official.
ChefGus/ John Olsen on May 15 at 10:06 a.m.
Perhaps he was not on his medicine?? :))
There is no need or excuse for threatening violence to anyone… other than a celebrity water board here and there by the “brave” souls that advocate torture. gus
Off to the lake for the weekend now.. a lundi gus
George_Sands on May 15 at 12:05 p.m.
There has to be a lot more to this story than is being reported IMHO.
Was he frustrated by not being able to conduct business by going to the Cities “clustered and incompetent” web page. You know the one, where all the Council members have purposely removed their email addresses (with the exception of Bob Apple). Where you cannot send any email directly to any employee with out going to their Rube’s Goldberg “ask spokane” application run by an 18 year old kid from California that charges the city $45K++ Per year? For that much money we could get two more City Councils members working full time.
The news states that the City employees are WELL TRAINED to handle these situations. If they are well trained, then they should have been able to “DEFUSE” (pun intended) the situation without calling out the Gestapo to hogtie the poor guy.
I dont know Thomas D. McMillan, but I would give him the benefit of the doubt until all the facts are in. Maybe he met Council President Shogun coming into the building. That would be enough to ruin anyones day or turn their apple cider to vinegar in a heart beat.
There must be more to the story and to what generated Mr. McMillan’s lapse of judgement and frustration with City Hall. We need to cure the disease of Spokane CIty Government and not just bandaid the symptoms of its Citizens when dealing with OUR public servants.
I am surprised that there are no security cameras in the lobby of City hall. If there were, I am sure that the City Employees would be working a lot harder knowing that there is some “OVERSIGHT” in their productivity while they surf the web and conduct personal business on City time.
In response to Council Members not answering THEIR emails, all emails to the council get “intercepted” by Mary Franklin (Council Admistrative asst. pay $100K+), get printed out and logged into notebooks for the council members to read at their leisure.