The Franklin Reporter & Advocate Eight Villages, One Community
By Robert Petersen.
Overall, time will tell the measure of the decision to have a civilian administrator for the Franklin Township Police Department who is appointed by, and beholden to, the Township Manager. But something else occurred last night that is very troubling.
Mayor Phil Kramer’s accusations that those who only had two Township Council meeting opportunities to voice opposition to the ordinance amendment were doing so solely to inject politics into the matter are reprehensible. This is the same Council who for months and months took ZERO accountability for, or actions against, one of their own members for his unbelievably racist and bigoted comments made over a series of years and for varying town events. And only when the political pressure was high enough did this Council finally issue a sheepish and ultimately toothless censure of Township Councilman Rajiv Prasad. The apparent rush now to make the police force a department within the township bureaucracy and to then appoint a civilian administrator is highly questionable.
Mayor Kramer’s political position was made crystal clear by he himself at the Aug. 13 Council meeting. He’s no longer an impartial representative for all residents of Franklin. While his rhetoric attempted to have us believe his decision was apolitical, his comments, both prepared and (perhaps more tellingly) impromptu, revealed the pre-determined and political drivers behind the Township Council’s 9-0 unanimous vote to approve the ordinance amendment. They want more control, they want it now, and they want to ignore or silence anyone who disagrees with their actions.
The unwillingness of this Council to listen to the voters of Franklin by having a predetermined mindset on the ordinance amendment is demeaning to the political process. And the Council’s projections of their own shortcomings upon the citizens of Franklin cannot be allowed to persist. We will remember come November.
