This committee assignment issue and the sewer problems beg further study into Trustee Eckman's ability to think. Look at the contradictions and tell me whether she even understands either of the issues

How stupid would you have to be to buy Ellen's rhetoric?

SHOREWOOD, Wis. (June 10, 2004) -- At about 10 p.m. Monday, two representatives of the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District were told to finish their presentation before the Village Board-- a tedious marketing pitch asking trustees to enter into a combined sewer area project to reduce the flow of water into sewers. Trustees had been at Village Hall meetings since 6:30 p.m., and everyone seemed to have had enough of the lengthy presentation that had been scheduled earlier to be heard by the Streets & Building Committee, on which Trustee Ellen Eckman sits.

Fuzzy Ellen Eckman
Trustee Eckman's fuzzy logic
Photo ©2004 Emily Davidian

However, the Streets & Building Committee did not hear the presentation, but instead had the entire board take up an hour on it.

The next item taken up by the Board was Eckman's chestnut, the need to reassign committee seats because committees she is not on take too long to do their work, causing Board meetings to begin late. This is inefficient, Eckman said, deprives the committees of other voices that might be valuable, excludes some trustees from participating and is not equitable.

To make her point, Eckman argued that the committees she sits on were done with their work in five minutes, while the Budget & Finance Committee and the Judiciary, Personnel and Licensing Committee labored well beyond the 7:30 scheduled start time for the full board. Meanwhile, Eckman was forced to twiddle her thumbs because of the other committees' inefficiency.

This argument, on the heels of an hour-long sewer project, has a striking rebuttal that need not be spoken except DIRECTLY HERE BECAUSE TRUSTEE ECKMAN CANNOT SEE IT.

If the Streets & Building Committee had done its work and heard the sewer presentation and UNDERSTOOD IT AND MADE A RECOMMENDATION, her thumbs could stop twiddling, she could be included in significant matters and the Board meeting would have been 45 minutes shorter.

Instead, she schemed to drag out the meeting as long as possible, even letting the sewer presentation jump ahead on the agenda, to give her demands for reassignment seeming -- in her mind -- credibility, while revealing her as an oil-less dipstick.