It Was Supposed To Be A *Fun* Run
Yesterday was the annual mayor’s fun run in downtown Waterloo, where Mayor Quentin Hart led fourth graders on a fitness run, passing right in front of our studios. As a bonus, thanks to sponsors, each participant got a fun run t-shirt, with those sponsors listed on the back, along with the signatures of the mayor and the police chief. It’s been just like that for some years.
Well, there was one thing. When Dan Trelka was police chief, he was also director of safety services, which gave him some oversight over the fire department. When Trelka and Hart had a disagreement, the resolution was that Trelka would focus on his role as police chief, but for a variety of reasons no doubt having to do with salary lines and compensation, his official title remained director of safety services, and that’s what it said under his signature on the shirts in the past when he worked for the city.
New year, new shirts…so the leisure services department swapped out the signatures, putting current chief Joel Fitzgerald’s moniker there. But they neglected to change the title. And that’s where a different kind of “fun” began.
Cedar Valley Backs the Blue sent media an email noting that apparently Hart had promoted Fitzgerald. One of Hart’s election opponents, Margaret Klein, followed up with a scathing email asserting the promotion was made in secret along with other decisions made by the current mayor. The city and school district issued statements noting that it was all in essence a copy editing error and there was nothing to the story.
That’s where Waterloo is at these days. The first conclusion drawn was to attach bad motives to the situation. And given the tenor of the times, plus social media, it was off to the races…and not at all the sort associated with a “fun run”. In the not-so-distant past, might there instead of been a simple question asked about it, instead of jumping to conclusions? Probably. But this is a different time, and a month before an election, it’s probably not surprising…and only a hint of what’s to come.
