For a new administration which ran on openness and fairness, this Monday's meeting, set up with little advance notice, would seem a horrendous preview.
1. While the new administration would seek to dictate LLCs have voting rights as well as freeholders, their hasty and secretive move raises questions of motive. The very name "limited liability" connotes a legal structure to sidestep basic civic and neighborly responsibility. How can an often deliberately mysterious legal "duck blind" be a proper neighbor? Forgetting basic civility and cooperation, how can neighbors hold them accountable?
Too, many or most of these legal structures are held by faceless outside investors. At the very least, two people maximum should be given the LLC vote, and the city should require public disclosure of their names, with contact information available.
As homeowners, taxpayers, and voters for two decades, people in our situation have rights, too. This measure should clearly not be suddenly rammed through in the off-season. Wait until next summer and make it a special referendum.
2. The new measures to restrict public input at city meetings also seem to be designed to create a less democratic and open government.
All of us in Rehoboth Beach are inclined to give some benefit of the doubt to our new administration, and wish it well. This hasty, poorly defined, secretive and potentially discriminatory set of proposals starts things off very poorly.
Stan Heuisler
Rehoboth Beach
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