Summerlin Envisions Elitist Government
Through her many public statements regarding the role of government, Mrs. Summerlin has indicated that she does not believe the average citizen can, or even should, be able to voice their opinions on issues of policy. More importantly, she appears to believe she is the most qualified to determine which of the voices should even be heard.
Though her campaign website lists ‘Inclusion’ as one of the foundational issues in her campaign, her prior record on Kerrville City Council was anything but inclusive. Her website states “the best decisions are made when a wide variety of voices are heard and many points of view are considered.” A nice theory, however Mrs. Summerlin’s actions seem to imply that she believes herself the all-powerful gatekeeper to determine WHICH voices shall be considered.
This desire to pick and choose worthy commenters and in fact to censor bad comments was never more evident than in her now infamous speech provided at a City Council workshop in February 2017.
In this speech Mrs. Summerlin states that property owners and people who actually vote are more important than renters and citizens who might be registered, but choose not to vote. Interestingly, the vast majority of citizens in Kerrville fall in the group of non-voting and/or renters and are thus of lesser importance to Mrs. Summerlin.
She goes on to state that the main reason a citizen goes to Council meetings is “to watch us discuss and deliberate”. By implication she is suggesting that citizen input is not really important to her or to the citizens themselves.
Finally, she characterizes dissenting views provided by citizens as “ranting and venting” that “just sucks the energy out of the room.”
At the same workshop, when the discussion moved to the possibility of holding town hall meetings to aid in development of the comprehensive plan (Kerrville 2050), Mrs. Summerlin’s elitist tendencies shined through again. She questioned the advisability of holding town hall meetings because she feared allowing the public to provide input would simply turn the town hall meetings into “gripe sessions”. Her idea was to appoint a very select committee of ‘experts’ to devise the comprehensive plan thus bypassing any direct citizen input into the process.
When other councilmembers explained that a community plan must involve at least an appearance of community input, she continued to argue the validity of her position.
Mrs. Summerlin clearly has a background in public policy and is smart enough to think through ideas on her own, but her style of hand picking where the ‘community input’ is derived from, is anything but inclusive.