Guccione Politicizes Street Renaming

Everyone has heard the talk of renaming one of our historic streets, what everyone doesn't know is how it all started and who was pushing. Once residents got wind of what the City was about to do, they began calling their Aldermen and several organizations in town  were motivated to oppose the change. The petitioner withdrew their request, the resolution was tabled, and citizens began breathing easier knowing that their historic street names would not change, unfortunately, this is when things escalated ... in the beginning:

Mayor Nickolas Guccione, owing the local NAACP for supporting him in his election last year, advised Mr. Curtis Davis of that organization, to write a formal letter to the City requesting the change of Kohrs Avenue to Dr, Martin Luther King Drive. When he received their letter Guccione drafted a resolution: "Resolution No. 12-472 Providing to Approve to Change the Name of Kohrs Avenue to Dr. Martin Luther King Drive, and Matters Relating Thereto," and presented it to the Aldermen for adoption or rejection. Interestingly, the resolution did not go through Planning and Zoning for their recommendation instead, Guccione circumvented the system and brought it straight to the Board of Aldermen. He did what he is best at; manipulation of the system in an effort to pull a fast one and put our good Aldermen on the spot. No one in the City could draft a resolution and present it to the board without going through channels other than the Mayor. If anyone is looking for who was responsible for this entire thing this is proof that Guccione was behind it all. At any rate, the Aldermen tabled the resolution until it could be investigated properly.

Since Kohrs Avenue is in Ward 1, Alderman Cheryl Kross called for the petitioner to meet in City Hall to determine what they were asking and things got hairy; George Kolb, City Administrator got involved suggesting a more high profile street to rename, and Nick Guccione took a powder leaving Alderman Kross holding the bag. He is a master of deception; it is leaked that Kross is in support of the street naming because she's running the meeting, Guccione leaves no trace of his involvement, and his plan to replace her in the upcoming election is in full swing by recruiting Robery Hussey to run against her. His only tie; the illegal resolution that did not go through the process, he must have figured no one would notice.

Today, Alderman Kross is facing another election where Mayor Guccione has recruited her opponent and he's determined to get her out. Armed with the lie that Kross is behind the street renaming fiasco, Guccione is out there hand in hand with Hussey spreading it to the HOA's and other public venues. Speaking of that, I find it interesting that Mayor Guccione is including his candidates; Hays and Hussey, and politicizing his duties as Mayor. Something stinks unethical there, but that's our beloved mayor, he is drawn like a moth to a flame whenever questionable ethics is about.

This Wednesday night at the regular Board of Aldermen meeting the resolution is back on the agenda. Alderman Kross is bringing it back off of the table to be voted down once and for all. Other than Guccione, George Kolb has been it's largest proponent and Wednesday is his final meeting as the interim City Administrator. Now we need to figure out a way of keeping Guccione from sneaking in a resolution memorializing our streets, after all he did make a promise to Curtis Davis of the NAACP and you can bet he's not finished. Mayor Guccione is responsible for a lot of our problems in the city today and this context is the only time the words "Guccione" and "responsible" should be used in the same sentence.

Touchy-Feely

Mayor Nick Guccione needs to pay more attention to the welfare of Wentzville than the welfare of special interest groups. His touchy-feely mode of operation is creating huge problems for our city and things will soon be out of control.

The $20 million dollar parks project has problems. First they unexpectedly hit rock trying to dig the pool for the splash station and now several other problems with the design have surfaced and it looks like the answer is going to be time and money. The question is not going to be the time, we know who will suffer for that — the citizens who expect deadlines to be met. More importantly, who is going to pay for the mistakes in the design and the many high-dollar change orders that are forth coming?

It is the opinion of this writer that the design company is responsible for errors and oversights but there's another problem. The city engineers looked over the design and must have approved the plans; where does that leave them and us? Does our city staff have the resources and expertise to review a design of this magnitude? A simple question that should be answered by our mayor since they work for him. If they do, why are there design change orders being presented by the designer? Did our city bite off more than they can chew? How many of these problems will relate to higher costs for the city and who is ultimately responsible? Mr. Mayor, rather than walking around in La-La land with your thumb in your mouth you need to get to the bottom of this very serious quandary. In case no one told you, you are responsible for the employees in the city; if they cost the taxpayers more than you told them, the buck stops with you!

Another subject I reported about was Mayor Guccione getting with the local NAACP inviting them to approach the Board of Aldermen to change one of our historic street names to Dr. Martin Luther King Blvd. It started out with wanting to change Kohrs Avenue and then, deciding that that street wasn't high-profile enough, it went to changing Pearce Blvd. The latest I heard was they have added the possibility of wanting to change Allen Street. Their justification for changing Allen Street is because the founder of Wentzville, Senator William M. Allen, was a slave holder. It wasn't uncommon for quite a few of our founding citizens to be slave holders simply because the town of Wentzville was a Confederate stronghold of sympathizers. This was the reason that during the Civil War, Union troops regularly raided the town and was the main cause for the Battle of Wentszville, the only recorded Civil War battle in St. Charles County.

Proponents to change the name of Allen Street to Dr. Martin Luther King Blvd. are essentially saying that the name change is not really to honor Dr, King as much as it seems to be a punitive action against our slave holding founder. Using that logic, since Wentzville was vastly Confederate, its name should be changed to Dr. Martin Luther Kingville. To deny William Allen is to deny the history of our city.

Citizens of Wentzville are rallying around saving the heritage of our city and preserving our historic street names. The Wentzville Rotary has already adopted a resolution to save our history and the Wentzville Community Historical Society is right behind them. Other groups in town will soon join in to petition our Board of Aldermen to keep our historic street names intact.

Mayor Guccione was quoted to say; "This matter has been blown out of proportion." Something tells me that it's just begun to get blown out of proportion. Mr. Mayor, you have poked your touchy-feely nose in a hornet's nest; I hope you get stung real bad!

It's Time To Come Out Of Hiding

I've been out of sight for way too long. I had planned to remain in seclusion until after the first of the year but a rash of recent calls and emails has me back banging on this keyboard. I've watched the meetings and stayed up to date on what's going on in City Hall but have declined comment until I had finished an important project. Well, the project isn't complete but I can no longer remain silent.

There's been a number of changes in Wentzville with employees quitting their jobs and some others having choke chains tugged on. The Aldermen are still cutting the budget and departments are being made to become more accountable, there's even talk of the unionization of the police department. Of course, our union chicken-cutting mayor, Guccione is behind that one. What a mistake this city made electing this  panderering vapid black hole, ugh, 1221 more days until a chance for sanity.

The reason for this writing is the plethora of rumors regarding the changing one of our old-town streets to Martin Luther King Blvd. Originally, the local chapter of the NAACP applied to have the street known as Kohrs Avenue changed but they pulled their application. Now rumors abound about them wanting Pearce Blvd. changed and our illustrious mayor said: "This is all blown out of proportion." If anything is blown out of proportion, it's his ability to lead our city.

Historically, our mayor has been associated with Mr. Curtis Davis who heads up the local chapter of the NAACP. On the advise of Guccione, Davis ran unsuccessfully for an Alderman's seat last April but Guccione has kept close ties still pandering to him and his organization to support his hand-picked slate of candidates to be named for the April 1013 election. Guccione is trying to bring this name changing along as quickly as possible to give him and his election-hopeful goons leverage in April. Guccione's goal is to bring pressure on our Aldermen to bend to his wishes and gain support for his candidates opposing them next April. This whole situation is to play the race card. Everything Guccione gets involved in is politically motivated and he'll use any underhanded dirty trick he can find..

Dr. Martin Luther King was a great man and accomplished great things in the attitudes and advancement of the people of United States, surely there's room in Wentzville to honor his name, I'm just not sure the answer is renaming one of our historic streets. The streets in our old-town have been named for great men in Wentzville to honor their accomplishments in making our city what it is today. Most people here do not know these names and may even think that changing our street names is of no consequence, I strongly disagree.

I heard last week that the Mayor set up a meeting Monday, December 10th held in city hall  with stakeholders, curiously, the Wentzville Historical Society was not invited. Why would Mayor Guccione set up this meeting and not invite our Historical Society, the very organization that knows what our street names mean? The answer is simple, he doesn't want anyone giving good reason not to destroy our heritage, he doesn't care, all he's looking for is votes! 

I know that the Wentzville Historical Society has over one hundred voting members and another 600 voting followers who are motivated to actively protect our history, including fighting city hall, if necessary. I think they would be quite interested in his plan to change our historic street names. Perhaps Guccione would like to meet with members of the Historical Society to explain exactly how his proposal is necessary to our city.

The City of Wentzville is always dedicating new streets and assigning them names, why is it necessary to change a part of our heritage? It's just another grab for support. Nick, if you are so interested in honoring Dr. King, put a monument in one of our many new parks, stay the hell away from our historic streets!

The Anonymous Commet

The Wentzvillian  received an anonymous comment from someone who is obviously dissatisfied with the reporting here. It wasn't going to put it up but after thinking about it, this is an interactive site and everyone needs to be able to make their point here, if they have one, and sometimes even when they don't (as in this case). On occasion it gives me some demented pleasure to let them criticize themselves with their literacy, knowledge of our city, or lack thereof. I have edited out the name of a private citizen (whom I do not recognize) because I don't report on anyone who is not elected, or running for election unless they've done something newsworthy or committed a crime. It saddens me to see a second anonymous person tell me that "no one cares" about The Wentzvillian. I guess I can scratch one of my 6,131 page views this month. Here is the comment as submitted, minus the private name:

Can anyone tell me why Leon Tow is running for mayor. He is HBA's puppet we know that but other than that I have seen no reason for him to run. He is my alderman and I have called him and that stupid Sheryl Cross many times for issues that I have had with the city and of course I recieved no return calls. I think you are just trying to SLANDER Mr. Guccione because you know that the residents of Wentzville like and respect him. No one cares about your blog actually we as residents that know Mr. Guccione is a good man are laughing at you and Mr. Tow because all it looks like you are doing is campaigning in your descrete way for Mr. Tow. Its sad really

Now it's my turn: Leon Tow is no more the HBA's (Home Builders Association) puppet than is any candidate who garners financial support for their campaigns through an organization or Corporation. For instance, your candidate Alderman Nick Guccione not only has funding from the Unions and Animal Rescue organizations, he may even have support from the NAACP, does that mean he is their puppet? Using your faulty syllogism the answer is yes! And in Gucciones case, I'd say that it may be closer to being the truth simply because he's lobbied in city hall for some of them. I know people who have made campaign contributions to candidates in past years were those candidates the puppets of their benefactors? I know you and people like you can and never will understand what's going on here but you need to try to understand the political system and how people get elected in small cities where none declare a party.

Your aldermen are in city hall at meetings almost every Wednesday night. If you have no luck calling them for a response (which I seriously doubt), and your subject is so paramount that it's causing you physical pain or you're having trouble tearing your ass from the TV, send someone down there to confront them for you. Oh and BTW, there are plenty of seats at every meeting, unless of course your candidate is pandering to yet another special interest group.

Regarding your allegation that I support Leon Tow; I don't know how many times I have to remind you radical Guccione enthusiasts, there are four candidates for mayor. Just because I put your buddy in the bucket of excrement with his pal Bill Schuette, that's no reason to think I'm supporting Leon Tow. You forgot (or don't want to admit) that there is another great candidate running for mayor; Darrel Lackey. Guccione and Schuette are dwarfed (both in credibility and intellectually) by either of these men. I predict; Leon Tow or Darrel Lackey will be our next Mayor of Wentzville. If Schuette campaigns he will come in third (you know where that leaves your candidate). If the rumors are true that Schuette is not going to campaign, Guccione might move into the third spot. Speaking of Darrel Lackey, his new website is up and running: http://www.darrel4mayor.com/

Finally: I tried to look up your word "descrete" and it's not in my dictionary between "descramble" and "describe" where it belongs. I love words and enjoy learning new ones. I'd like to learn the meaning of it so I can make it my "word for the day," any ideas where I might find it? If you and your small circle of "residents" are laughing at me and it gives you any comfort, I laugh at myself too, but who "really cares" what you think Mr. or Ms. Anonymous. I hope to see you at the meetings and don't forget to register to vote, Nick Guccione is going to need your vote if he is going to beat Bill Schuette for the third spot. This is fun, just like pulling the wings off of flies.