According to a front page article in the Times-News (April 6,) John Walsh of Burley thinks that Burley City Councilman Dennis Curtis should resign from the City Council.
Mr. Walsh, who has conducted a personal vendetta against some members of the city government, past and present, bases his assertion upon what he perceives to be unethical behavior on the part of these people in general, and Mr. Curtis in particular.
Specifically, in this instance, Mr. Walsh is citing a recent court ruling which found Mr. Curtis guilty of physical battery which was committed – you guessed it – against the person of Mr. Walsh. His request for Curtis’s resignation is highly redundant, for several reasons.
First of all, Mr. Curtis has entered into an agreement with the court in response to the citizen’s complaint against him, an agreement which will be binding for one year.
Secondly, several members of the Council have already stated that they do not want to seek censure for Curtis’s aforementioned physical battery of Mr. Walsh nor do they want to ask for his resignation.
This writer’s assertion is that Mr. Walsh has his own history of battering behavior, based upon the assumption that battery can occur not only physically, but verbally. Mr. Walsh is a verbal batterer whose battering actions are usually manifested in the form of letters-to-the editor in local publications and in one particular instance, an ad paid for by Mr. Walsh and published several times in a local news publication, The Weekly Journal, edited by City Council member, Jay Lenkersdorfer.
The ad was in no way subtle. It appeared during a mayoral election campaign and depicted the feet of a clown with the underlying caption, “Get the Clown Out,” referring to a candidate who had been on the receiving end of Mr. Walsh’s diatribe for quite some time. I consider this to be a prime example of verbal battery – one for which there will be no court action unfortunately.
So – this leaves us back at square one. Mr. Curtis, according to Mr. Walsh, is the “bad guy,” and Mr. Walsh continues to occupy his pristine status of a “concerned citizen.” It is my fervent hope that Burley’s government can survive this attempt to set members of the City Council against each other, and that Mr. Curtis will be allowed to continue his good service for Burley. For, as the saying goes, “If a house be divided against itself, that house cannot stand.” Mark 3:25
Sarah M. Blasius
