Bluffdale mayor, council at it again

BLUFFDALE — Mayor Claudia Anderson opened the Bluffdale City Council meeting Tuesday night with a tap of the gavel, but the ding-ding of a bell would have been more appropriate.

A heated first 30 minutes of the meeting included Anderson lashing out at the five members of the City Council in a prepared six-page mayor's report peppered with insults, name-calling and even a personal attack on one council member's management qualifications.

While Anderson read her report, members of the City Council shook their heads and even chuckled. At one point, Councilman Jess Kelley mockingly accompanied the mayor's rant by humming "God Bless America."

"Seldom am I speechless," Councilman Craig Briggs said after the report, "but I am now. I can't believe the degree to which you would stoop."

During her report, the mayor accused the City Council of opposing Bluffdale voters' right to vote on the city's form of government and involving former administrative services director Brent Bluth in plans to thwart referendum petitions on the issue, which Anderson said resulted in Bluth's firing.

Anderson also criticized the City Council members for using taxpayer funds to defend themselves in a pair of lawsuits she filed against them — one challenging action to create a city manager form of government by ordinance, and the other because the council refused to recognize her hiring of former state Rep. Dave Hogue as administrative services director. Judges in both lawsuits ruled in favor of the City Council.

Along the way, Anderson accused the City Council of making "outrageous decisions" that "are not based on rational thought" and called its members "hypocritical" and "self-serving."

"At this point, it's not an exaggeration to say that I wish the City Council members were not in office, and likewise they wish that I was not the mayor," she said. "The difference is in our methodology. I trust the voters; they do not."

The mayor said she plans to send the report to every resident of Bluffdale. It includes a plea that they support her as the city's mayor and chief executive officer by voting against a switch to a city manager form of government in a special election June 26. The report says the mayor also hopes voters do not re-elect council members Kelley, Briggs and Martha Speed in November.