Pot, meet kettle

Fear and Loathing in Waynesboro column by Chris Graham
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The man who would be mayor slinked out of the city-council chambers quietly through a back door.

He didn’t want to face the group of close to 50 people who had just given the man that he had asked three weeks ago to submit his resignation as city manager a loud 33-second standing ovation.

He’d also passed up the opportunity to publicly address his reasons for instigating the palace coup during the council meeting that had featured some mighty fireworks – the vice mayor accusing him of ugly backroom politicking being only the start of things there.

This isn’t to say that Tim Williams didn’t want to address the situation, of course.

“This is what I have dealt with for the past four years,” Williams told the sympathetic-to-his-cause News Virginian for a story published in today’s edition.

Doug Walker, the soon-to-be-former city manager, “gets what he wants and manipulates council,” Williams said in the interview, apparently referring to the resolution that city council ended up passing by a 3-2 vote, with Williams among those assenting, accepting Walker’s forced resignation under terms that were included in his standard employment contract that give him a severance.

Williams used an interesting phrase – “honor the terms of his contract” – to refer to this apparent manipulation on the part of Walker.

Another curious turn of words from Williams offered criticism on how Vice Mayor Nancy Dowdy read from prepared remarks that included the accusations of backroom politicking. “(A)nd then Nancy, with her script, rips Frank and then Tom joins in. It’s just modes of operation for them. Everything was scripted, everything was prepared.”

For those who don’t regularly attend city-council meetings and work sessions and thus wouldn’t otherwise know this, Williams often reads from prepared remarks – the original authorship of which is often at question.

“Everything was scripted. Everything was prepared.” Considering that Williams met with Walker shortly after the election on May 6 to ask him for his resignation has to make one wonder if Williams is cognizant of the irony of his words. Unless we’re supposed to believe that he hatched the idea all by his little self in the wee hours of Election Night after Frank Lucente had whispered in his ear that he wanted him to be the next mayor.

Speaking of that, Williams finished up his talk with the NV saying that he hoped the city could get “a true man and a true leader that will not divide our city and will work for all of city council. That’s what we need is true leadership.”

Couldn’t have said it better myself, though being a writer, I will try.

Ahem. Pot, meet kettle.