Mary Ellen's Version of Basket of Deplorables
On a number of occasions, Mrs. Summerlin has expressed an apparent contempt for the citizens she now wishes to represent. She did not use the term ‘deplorables’ however, during her prior service on Kerrville City Council she did not hide her disregard for the average citizen and his/her rights to address their elected officials.
The Visitor’s Forum is the part at the beginning of each City Council meeting where citizens have the opportunity to address Council regarding anything they like. In just her fifth meeting (January 24, 2017) after being appointed to City Council, Mrs. Summerlin decided to ‘try out’ moving the Visitor’s Forum from the beginning of the meeting, to the very end. Her unstated goal of minimizing citizen involvement succeeded as three of the four citizens signed up to speak that meeting ended up going home before being able to speak, rather than sit through the full meeting.
How can we know what Mrs. Summerlin’s goal was? She explains it in her own words in the following video. First she says that the only citizens that truly matter to her are the ones that pay taxes and vote in Kerrville. In other words, if you rent your home and choose not to vote, Mrs Summerlin does not feel obligated to represent you. In a city of 25,000 people, where as little as 2000 people might vote in a City election, is Mrs. Summerlin really saying that she does not care about the 23,000 non-voters?
And if a renter/non-voter does happen to show up at a meeting wishing to express a concern they might have, Mrs. Summerlin suggests having that person wait until the very end of the meeting because in her words, it “just sucks energy out of the room”.
At a City Council workshop in February 2017, Mrs Summerlin speaks of her feelings of disdain for the majority of citizens who come to speak at City Council meetings.
Mrs. Summerlin will likely claim that she does not feel all citizen input is bad, however it is quite clear that she believes that she is best qualified to determine which words are worthy of being spoken, when and by whom.