How much will it cost us?

To the Editor:

Being one of the peons of the citizenry of Fairmont, I was so honored that the guy “with three votes in his back pocket” lowered himself to instruct us on just how truly ignorant all of us are in his Monday letter to the editor, “Editorial Board errs again.”

I was pleased to be told that there are a bunch of us uneducated twits, according to the King of Fairmont, and it is not limited to just idiots like me. Come to find out that the Sentinel Editorial Board also embarrasses itself all the time too. In fact, it seems that any of the citizens of this city who disagree with Mr. Hawkins are also limited in the brains department.

Us “dunces” were against running up Fairmont’s bills by throwing out the City Attorney, without reasonable cause, who actually did three jobs (as City Attorney, city counselor and work in the human resources area), and it seems we were correct. The temporary contract with the County Attorney to handle Fairmont’s non-felony criminal cases will probably run around the same amount that we paid our late City Attorney. And now we have to also replace her as the city’s counsel and get someone to do the work she did in HR.

The Sentinel objected to the King’s latest desire that the council doesn’t need someone with a legal background at City Council meetings. Mr. Hawkins wants us to just let the Great Trio enact their edicts without any idea whether they meet legal muster. Obviously, Mr. Hawkins knows better than the Sentinel and a goodly number of his supposed constituents. (I think he may believe that we work for him and that he does not work for us.)

I do have one question of Tom Hawkins: When do we get to the point that the lawyer he wanted to permanently replace Elizabeth Bloomquist with in the first place (and the reason that he put all of Fairmont’s citizens through this charade) is announced so that we can go on to the next costly mess that he subjects us to?

The Editorial Board does get it right again, and when can we get rid of this elected mistake? It seems that we do not have sufficient legal cause to recall him under Minnesota law, even though we did have the right to recall under him our City Charter. We have to wait until he really screws up — and how much will that cost Fairmont before we do?

Jack H. Hansen

Fairmont