March 26th marks the
day that the real Frank Ferry returned to the Santa Clarita City Council. After being provoked by an admittedly
annoying TimBen Boydston, Ferry revealed that he would no longer abide the
advice of friends who told him to restrain himself. He revealed a new persona, “The Tiger”, to
attack Boydston, whom he has labeled “The Sheep.” In a tour
de force of sloppy analogies, naked threats, and passionate—if unsound—arguments,
Councilmember Frank Ferry has promised to make the remaining year that he will
serve with Boydston (unless he runs again, which he only half-jokingly threatened)
a very unpleasant year indeed. While The Signal and KHTS will probably focus
on the Habitat for Heroes Development as tonight’s big story, support for that
project was a foregone conclusion—the real news is that Frank isn’t faking it
anymore.
SCVTV began the broadcast some 20
minutes late, and once they decided to start airing the meeting, the USTREAM
player interrupted the meeting every 15 minutes to broadcast two commercials. One day, perhaps, SCVTV will be able to
broadcast a meeting start to finish without distraction, but I’m not holding my
breath. Happily, though, the feed
started just in time to see TimBen Boydston deliver comments that broke the
camel’s back—or roused The Tiger’s furor, to use Ferry’s spirit animal.
Boydston Needles
During individual comments from
each member, TimBen Boydston gave a very long, rather self-righteous account of
his quest to determine whether the “Mayor Dude” campaign of four years ago had
been a legal use of taxpayer dollars. In
this campaign, ads featuring photos of Frank Ferry were released in an apparent
attempt to make City Hall more accessible to youth and uninvolved
residents. The campaign occurred as
Ferry was running for another term, and Boydston felt it amounted to improper reelection
advertisements at taxpayer expense. Boydston’s
hunch was right, at least partially. City
Attorney Joe Montes confirmed that then-Mayor Frank Ferry should not have been
allowed to have his picture placed in non-subscription publications at taxpayer
expense. However, Montes said that Ferry
lacked the intent required to make this a serious violation; he didn’t know it
was improper. And unfortunately, Boydston
had an unwelcome air of political false piety, if I can use that phrase, during
his lecture. He talked about discussing
the campaign during his ethics training, and about how he hoped to prevent this
from happening again in an unappealingly smug way.
Ferry Threatens
Councilmember Frank Ferry had had
enough. He gets confused when he gets
excited, and he tried to have it both ways at first. He painted himself as a victim of TimBen
Boydston (“he has brought a hateful, hateful tone to the City Council”) and
simultaneously as Boydston’s doom (Ferry called himself “The Tiger” that would
destroy any candidates that TimBen “The Sheep” Boydston supports). Then Ferry tried to say that the Mayor Dude
campaign hadn’t helped him at all (he won re-election by just over 30 votes) yet
simultaneously maintained that it had been a huge, popular, rousing success for
the City (Ferry pointed out its notoriety and visibility in the
community).
Eventually, his passion
crystalized into a mission to no longer stay quiet. He threatened to start a State Independent
Expenditures Committee bearing his name that would let him challenge any
candidate that Boydston supports to take Ferry’s seat in the upcoming
elections. “Am I allowed to still
run? I can ruin those plans a little
bit, still,” Ferry mused aloud. He promised
that he would be silent no longer, saying, “The tiger’s awake, I get a year of
saying what’s on my mind.” Another
highlight was Ferry’s bizarre, unwelcome insistence on bringing his son into
the conversation. He said that Boydston’s
attacks on Ferry’s character were also attacks on Ferry’s son: “I can’t think
you have even minimal human decency for me and/or my son.” Ferry concluded by telling Boydston that “I
don’t want it [the City] going to hell as a result of you and your minions”,
and calling on an inquiry into how much taxpayer money was wasted by Boydston
seeking staff time and legal opinions on things like sign ordinances and health
insurance benefits.
Boydston added fuel to the fire
by calmly asking City Attorney Montes if he should leave the Council while
Ferry discussed his benefits package, so there was nothing improper. “If you wanna leave while I talk yeah, that’d
be awesome,” said Ferry.
The Rest
I have to run now, but I’ll more
coverage later. The rest of the meeting
saw widespread support for the Habitat for Humanity project to build a bunch of
affordable homes for military veterans, support for pre-zoning movie ranches to
be annexed into Santa Clarita, support for Marsha McLean to continue her work
with SCAG, and the self-righteous Glo Donnely coming forward during public
participation to deride Boydston for coming forward to “to bitch about
something that was so stupid.”
