To date both the BOA and certainly the SC have functioned as lapdogs instead of guard dogs in providing appropriate oversight to those in the Executive branch. It's way past time that both the BOA and SC begin conducting themselves as the Checks and Balances to the Executive Branch of our local government. The Executive, and the school administration that consumes the majority of the city's budget, have functioned for too many years without appropriate oversight and accountability to the other branches of our government, and most certainly have failed to be accountable to the citizens paying the bills. It is sickening and wrong, and it needs drastically to be corrected.

There is little reason to expect the current members, based on conduct to date, to begin acting with appropriate gravitas in their oversight roles, but citizens should demand it nonetheless and hold to account very publicly those who fail to comply. Even if the public has stupidly trusted its public officials and allowed unchecked power, this does not have to continue to be the case, nor should it be.

What is happening on a national level, where our very democracy has been threatened, has been happening locally for many years. Our freedoms locally have been eroded little by little, with degradation of what were once more open public processes. Fake news (with even the hiring of a PR firm by the school system/mayor) has been the mode for the past decade (at least). Attacks on free speech, free press (one local paper's editor was directly threatened more than once about "unfavorable" articles), public participation, and whistleblowers have been a constant under the current administration.

Citizens who want to believe the fairy tales that our officials (for the most part) have been true to the oaths they took are certainly welcome and likely to continue doing so. But the facts and the enormous dollars spent without accountability prove otherwise, despite some notable exceptions.