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Sometimes, there ain’t enough column space...
1
Jul 2009
Not so fast there, Mr. Champagne
Posted by Scott Spielman
at 12:28 PM | Comments (4)
Well, this is a first.
Monday I met with Township Trustee Al Ostrowski in Van Buren Township. He had called me to say he had a change of heart over his vote to reject the reinstatement of public safety director Gerry Champagne. He said he wanted to fix it, and had a letter for the public apologizing for his mistake. (It will be published in its entirety in the paper this week, as well as on the web site.)
Even though it is apparently no longer the case.
I received an email from Ostrowski this morning, with the subject ‘decision.’ There was no content in the body of the email, just an attachment that I had to download something to convert into Word format. Here it is:
“I recently voted along with six other Board members with information provided at the time regarding the termination of Public Safety Director Gerald Champagne. I talked with several individuals after the vote which gave me second thoughts on my decision and I wrote a letter regarding such, which was made public.
However, after further discussion, I received clarity on the issues I had concerns with and I am now comfortable with the original decision I made regarding the termination of Mr. Champagne.
I want to apologize to the community for writing the letter. I will have no further comment regarding this issue.”
Um. Okay. I admit it. I’m a little dumbstruck.
Yesterday, I wrote a column praising Ostrowski for his courage. People have posted comments on this web site thanking him for his apparent change of heart, too. That is in part why I wanted to get this blog up quickly. Rather than re-write the column or put some huge asterisk on it, I’m just going to run it as is. I think it still brings up some valuable points. It’ll be in the paper this week, and perhaps posted later today.
Mr. Ostrowski said he has no further comment on the issue, and that is a further disservice to the community. I, for one, will have plenty of comment about it.
For now, though, I will stick with my editor background and tell him that he misspelled the word in the email subject line.
It’s not ‘decision.’ It’s spelled ‘INdecision.’
Comments (4)
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