Letter to the Editor: "$1,500 is not all that much to do what the people actually want done"

(The following Letter to the Editor has been submitted by Thomas Hansen of Decorah):

"The Decorah City Council had three options to fill the recently vacated 2nd Ward city council seat.  At their meeting on August 5th, they chose the worst one of them.

Then they were going to try to ask the Iowa Secretary of State for an exemption to not hold a special election. This angered people enough to get more than the necessary number of signatures to call for a special election in about six hours.     

As far as Ms. Neal's appointment is concerned, the signs in her yard or how vocal she was in opposing the hanging of the President Trump flags for his birthday celebration were secondary to my concerns over her vulgar rant outside the council chambers after the vote that became so loud and disruptive that the council chamber's doors had to be closed.

As far as the costs of the special election, this is a City Council that was willing to gamble a million plus taxpayer dollars just to ask the IUB to buy a utility they knew nothing about running; ran off a company that was going to spend millions of dollars on infrastructure improvements, was going to provide 150 good paying jobs to the Decorah area, and was going to bring in tens of millions of dollars in revenue starting as soon as the doors opened without asking anything from the taxpayers; and then decided to bring in 75 jobs at a cost of $10,000 per job in taxpayer subsidies. $1,500 is not all that much to do what the people actually want done."