Business as usual in the W-Zone

by M. Stewart
The transparent deviance of the Surace administration is genuinely beyond belief, yet somehow we have come to see it as normal in the Wellsville Zone. Who, therefore, can be surprised by Wednesday’s release of the police department investigation report?

Citing all sorts of legal and confidentiality issues, Surace stonewalled the news media, village council, and voters by withholding the contents of the attorneys’ report until after the election. One day after, suddenly he has nothing to hide.

I’ll let you read the details in The Review and the Morning Journal. Suffice it to say that the report shows that Surace has presided over a dangerously dysfunctional police department so lacking in leadership that if something isn’t done, “consequences could be dire.”

It is, of course, the mayor who has allowed the situation to get as bad as it has. His vapid paralysis over the last four years has allowed the command structure of the PD to completely unravel. Yet Tuesday’s unofficial vote tally shows the mayor defeating challenger Dave Lloyd by seven votes.

How Surace managed to get any votes on Tuesday is astounding to me; how he managed to win the unofficial results is downright bizarre—so bizarre, in fact, that I don’t believe it.

Short of launching a tar and feather party at village hall, the decent people of Wellsville can hope that the final election results reveal something different than what was reported on election day. The stakes are high for all of us in the South County region.

At Wednesday’s council meeting, Surace was confronted by former village councilman and fiscal officer John McClelland about his bogus campaign advertisements alleging that Lloyd was responsible for past fire fund deficits. Instead of addressing the issue, Surace pounded the gavel to silence McClelland.

Let’s remember that McClelland was three-term councilman and chair of the village council finance committee. As the village fiscal officer, McClelland pushed for reforms that allowed the village to work itself out of fiscal emergency at an unprecedented pace, and he had to fight council the entire way to do it. Yet Joe Surace will not extend him the courtesy to address council beyond three minutes. Again, this is unbelievable behavior from an arrogant, thoughtless mayor.

According to The Review, Surace then had the balls to ask that “personal vendettas” be put in the past. What this guy doesn’t realize is that these attacks are not personal vendettas. They are public outcries against deceptive, dysfunctional government.

If the official election results stick, the honest people of Wellsville must keep fighting to reclaim their town. Otherwise, Wellsville will remain the joke of the Tri-State Area—a dire warning, a poignant example of how bad government can distort the reality of citizens.