Editor:

The men and women of the Fairhope Committee of Concern met last evening to enjoy coffee together and to voice their growing concerns about recent happenings in our city. At the outset they chose to be publicly represented by Stan Grubin. The committee may come together again as dictated by events in the future.

Here is a listing of the committee’s concerns:

• Is the Fairhope Governmental Structure Committee, chaired by Bicycle Playing Card’s former CEO Chuck Zunk, just an assassination team to do in our Mayor Kant? Read on.

• Did Council President Bob Gentle initially instigate the “Governmental Structure” committee; propose its select high-level, CEO-type membership and its agenda? If not, then who initially determined that our city government was so flawed that the mayor’s job needed to be put under a microscope? The subject surely did not come up in any significant way during council meetings prior to July 23. Many concerned Fairhopians still think our city (with a few exceptions that are fixable) has been running pretty well over the years!

• Was Mayor Kant even consulted before the fact that his job description, pay rate and reporting procedures had inherent problems that needed study and possible fixing by a high-level committee of so called “organizational experts”? Did the council discuss and consider these issues privately behind closed doors? This all came up so suddenly after July 9! Has fair play and cooperation completely gone out the window?

• Was any thought given to including women on the “Restructure” committee? Or, how about a representation of a few plain, ordinary, taxpaying men and women? Is it possible that our City Council has presumed that the obviously superior intellect of a blue ribbon committee of past and present big shots will give better advice than a cross-section of our citizenry? If so, what unfortunate arrogance.

• There is a nagging concern that “Structure” committee members are not kindly disposed toward Mayor Kant. This is based on known prior relationship issues. How much consideration was given to personal objectivity in member selection? Was Mayor Kant even consulted about the committee membership that would study his job and his organization’s destiny?

When all is said and done, will our City Council just move the players around on our small city organization table and spend a precious $50,000 to $100,000 toward the salary and benefits of a new (to be defined) manager for our Fairhope, which is really not broken and working well? We hope not! Should this committee approach just be dumped; and the council and mayor collectively work out their issues if any? Isn’t that why we elected them … not Chuck Zunk et al?

Here’s a final, perhaps unrelated, question for Mr. Zunk in his role as chairman of the Airport Authority: Does it matter to you that a possible majority of Fairhope citizens does not approve of your recent moves to bring significant military air traffic takeoff and landings to our city?