and Mr. Bona needs to rethink how he has organized his merchandise. I hear over and over again how downtown merchants are frustrated by the lack of commerce, but look at what they are selling. Based on what I see in their windows, I'm not motivated to step off the sidewalk, let alone park my car and explore.
 

Well I have refrained from commenting on this post -lest Greg gets his shorts in a twist for not knowing what the hell he is talking about---obviously before Greg's "time" in the area---he does not know that Keith Bona and the "powers that be" (Read: da Mayor) have gone around and around-- especially when Keith served as a City Councilor----Keith has kicked over enumerable of the Mayor's "apple carts". If Keith's quote in the paper seemed to be measured or "qualified" in order to avoid offending those powers that be----it was not---he has been very critical of the Mayor and the development of the downtown for years---when he was on the City Council-- when his shop was on Eagle St. and now that he has a shop on Main St.--- nothing new and as usual no punches being pulled----Keith's quote was completely unqualified--he could care less if he upsets apple carts--and Amy is correct to a certain extent--but local merchants are encouraged by consultants that when dealing with a big box (aka Wal-Mart) carve out your own niche market----Creative Crafts has fine quality stuff---but is their a market for it---anyway- marketing is a private sector thing-- not a governmental thing--and the reason we don;t have a Chamber of Commerce is that not enough merchants were willing to pony up ---and now we have no Chamber---and some of them want to pass it off to the tax-payer----windmills suck-- but benches would be good-----chbpod
 

Clark- I am aware of Keith's past. Spending hours surfing the microfiche of the Transcript at the library is quite informative. Such research is actually one of my hobbies.

Regardless, I agree with Amy's point and I agree with you that the merchants need to do more to represent their collective interests. A unified lobbying effort would be far more effective than whines such as these, solicited by a reporter trying to create a story that doesn't really exist.

My comment was strictly on the "This isn't political" portion of the Bona quote.

I think you read too much into the post. (And you said that this post was on Wes Flinn's blog on your show. Oops.)
 

Wes Flinn?? did I?? sorry not to give you credit-- I see now that my post was superfluous since you saw the show------researching the microfiche??? cool-- but Transcript articles about Council meetings usually omit a lot of the exchanges between Mayor and Councilors----also miss the "body language"---but the tension between Keith and JBIII was evident-- although not as bad as when the Gang of Five got control of the Council----now that was fun--- chbpod
 

From my reading of the events the gang of five simply seemed to exist to obstruct the mayor. They did not propose and changes or new ways of looking at things. It seemed only to be a pissing match, and not much more.

If my memory is correct, the Mayor then beat Melito in '95(?) by a 2 or 3 to 1 margin in the race for the corner office and the rest of the gang were tossed from the council.