Council

Council

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“You have too much to lose to fight this — and you will lose. We had an opportunity to resolve this, and I think both sides blew it.”

David Smoot replied that he agreed both sides “blew it.”

“Not a one of these boys needs to be in jail,” Mr. Smoot told the council members. “I’ve seen more than all of them . . . The way they look at this is you are the big bad powers and they are the little people — that’s how they look at it.”

“If some of the young people,” Mr. Reynolds said, “had taken David Smoot’s advice a month or more ago, it wouldn’t have gotten to this. He has tried to be a positive influence . . . He tried to make others understand that it is the way you look as well as the way you act.”

Mr. Miller, expressing his opposition to aggressive action by the town, called the young peoples’ anger, “a statement of frustration of low and moderate income people of the county who feel left out of the equation. That is the basic problem here: we don’t know each other anymore. If we knew each other we wouldn’t treat each other this way.”

Council member Ray Gooch replied, “Polarization is not what this council is about... I hope I live here long enough to see us address issues before the town and the county in terms other than the polarization of haves and have nots, of born heres and come heres.”

Councilman Mark Bailey told the young people that, 10 or 15 years ago, “I spent more time on that corner than anyone in this room. People complained . . . and we laid low for a while.

“When you pushed back ... it is ruined. It breaks my heart to think that comer I used to hang out on is ruined. There is no place left to go.”

On Mr. Morehouse’s motion, the council voted 5-1 with Mr. Miller opposed, to request aggressive enforcement of existing state laws regulating disorderly conduct, unlawful assembly and obstruction of free passage.