Is outgoing Duluth City Councilor Russ Stewart spending his final weeks in office trying to undo all the votes he didn't agree with earlier?
Recently, Stewart, whose term ends at the end of the year, attempted to halt a City Council commitment to combat homelessness and improve Duluth's housing stock. After singling out decent, affordable housing as one of the city's most pressing challenges, councilors in 2005 voted to divert $600,000 a year for five years to create a Housing Investment Fund. The interest from the fund would be available to build homes and fix existing houses. Thanks to it, Duluth is keeping pace with a goal of creating 1,000 new housing units by 2010.
But Stewart, who told the News Tribune editorial page, "I didn't want to vote for [the fund in the first place]" (even though he did vote for it), introduced a resolution earlier this month to freeze funding two years into the five-year commitment. He didn't prevail, but he didn't quite lose, either; councilors voted to table the resolution.
That's not all. With fellow City Councilor Jim Stauber, Stewart is seeking to renege on a City Council commitment to support a half-acre demonstration water garden at Bayfront Festival Park. The garden was the only part of a Bayfront Master Plan approved by the council in 2002. The Stewart-Stauber resolution, scheduled to be introduced at Monday's council meeting, would withdraw that support.
These are just two actions -- it isn't officially a trend until there are three. But if Stewart continues with what appears to be a campaign to revise history, he will create a mess his successors will have to undo when the new council convenes. In the meantime, he risks dismantling an otherwise admirable record of service.
ADVERTISEMENT
If he's fortunate, his current colleagues will vote down such efforts and save him, and his legacy, from himself.
