Quincy Aldermen Mike Farha, R-4, and Steve Duesterhaus, D-2, were at odds this week over an issue at Quincy Regional Airport.

Their disagreement came at the end of Monday’s City Council meeting when Farha made a motion to direct the city’s legal department to strike certain language from the city’s lease agreement with the fixed-based operator related to the collection of “fuel flowage fees.”

“The intent of this resolution would be to end the collection of fuel flowage fees,” Farha said, referring to the 7-cents-per-gallon tax paid by airport patrons who buy fuel from the fixed-based operator, Curtis Aviation.

This got Duesterhaus riled. He made the following comment in response to Farha’s motion:

“The Aeronautics Committee has repeatedly declined to take action as the alderman proposes. He proposes opening an excess of $30,000 hole in the budget without proposing any means to fill that hole. And we already subsidize that operation very heavily. Those proceeds are used to reduce that operating deficit to maintain the facilities that we own out there — the fueling facilities being one — and I would dare say this is not a burden on the people that use that fuel. So I really don’t know what this proposal stems from, but I would encourage members (aldermen) to make a choice right here and decline to direct the corporation counsel to draft this language.”

Farha responded to Duesterhaus’ comments by asserting that the fuel flowage fee is simply a tax and “is not our money.” He said it belongs to those who pay the tax, which is an investment into the airport.

“It’s their money,” he said. “I’m not asking to increase anything, to change anything, other than return the investment that those people have made in the airport.”

Farha said he would be “happy to propose a variety of cuts at any point in time” to make up for the lost revenue. But he feels more incentives are needed to spark additional activity at the airport.

“Ten years ago we had 12,000 enplanements on the commercial side. We had a lot of activity on the business side. Today at that airport we have less than 1,200 enplanements, and we don’t have the same level of activity,” Farha said. “Cutting the tax, cutting the fee, has been shown over and over and over to increase activity. That’s all I want to do.”

Mayor John Spring called for a voice vote on Farha’s motion. From the audience, it sounded like an equal numbers of “ayes” and “nays” were verbalized. Spring declared: “In the opinion of the chair, the ayes have it.”

The resolution will appear on the agenda for Monday’s meeting, which will be held at the Quincy Public Library annex, 514 York.

Speaking of the agenda, the original agenda came out at noon Friday as usual. Then according to a new procedure that Spring put in place this week, City Clerk Jenny Hayden waited two hours to see if anyone from the public would ask to speak to the council on any of the listed agenda items.

No one did.

However, one person who had come forward earlier in the week to ask for the opportunity to speak subsequently came forward Friday and asked to have his name withdrawn.

Mayor John Spring today said he plans to move forward with his proposal to give residents an extra two-hour window after the weekly meeting agenda is finalized on Fridays to sign up to speak on any agenda item that interests them.

Spring said he talked with City Clerk Jenny Hayden after Monday’s council meeting and they agreed to institute the new program this week.

Under the plan, the council’s agenda will be posted on the city’s Web site by noon on Friday. Residents will then have until 2 p.m. to look over the agenda and put in a request with the city clerk to speak to any agenda item. Residents can also, as before, put in a request to talk about any other subject they wish.

Up until now, the deadline to sign up for comments was 11 a.m. Friday. But since that was the same deadline for finalizing the agenda, residents had no way to know if there was a topic on the agenda they’d like to address.

Spring hopes this new system will appease that concern.

However, the idea doesn’t satisfy Michael Black, the Quincy resident who filed a petition with the city asking that an open public forum be allowed as part of each council meeting.

“Mayor Spring’s two-hour window is a flippant response” to the request for more public voice at council meetings, Black said in an e-mailed statement.

He said the proposed ordinance presented Monday night by Alderman Jennifer Lepper would handle the agenda-addressing question “a lot better” because it would give residents until noon Monday to sign up to speak on any agenda topic. That’s a 72-hour window compared to the two-hour window Spring is instituting.

“And the proposal by the mayor does not eliminate the voting, which is what started this whole thing in the first place and is addressed by the new ordinance,” Black said.

“All I can say is that the mayor is completely out of touch with what the citizens of Quincy want. Every citizen I’ve talked to or seen Web comments on supports this basic idea. Fear of the public seems incongruous with being a public servant. I hope the citizens of Quincy take notice when the next election comes up.”

Lepper’s proposed ordinance, which was given first reading Monday, would allow a forum to be held during each council meeting without a vote of aldermen, with up to six speaking slots available. Each person would be able to talk for three minutes.

Alderman Steve Duesterhaus objected after Lepper tried to push the ordinance through by dispensing with the need for three readings. One of his main gripes is that the ordinance would take away the council’s right to decide whether public comment on a particular subject is appropriate.

Corporation Counsel Andrew Staff interjected that it would take a two-thirds vote of the council — essentially 10 votes — to dispense with the second and third readings because the proposed ordinance involves “taking away the City Council’s ability to vote on something.”

Staff also gave his opinion that the city already has a “public access ordinance” that allows public speakers. And Lepper’s proposed ordinance, he said, “is going to be more restrictive than the existing ordinance. The existing ordinance allows any number of people to register to speak. The policy is a five-minute limitation. This ordinance is actually going to limit the speakers to six and actually provide a three-limit limitation, so this is going to be a more restrictive ordinance.”

Black also had a response to Monday’s developments.

“The City Council (just the Democrats I might add) are going to great lengths to prevent the citizens of Quincy from having a free voice,” he wrote, in part.

“Mr. Duesterhaus seems to think his right to vote trumps our right to free speech, which I vehemently disagree with (and have court cases which agree). I would remind him that we don’t work for him. He says this is “too important” to vote on a bypass — and if he would care to find ANYBODY who would get up to speak against this I’d be more than interested to hear them. On the other hand, I’ve found no end of people who support the free speech aspect of this ordinance.”

Those in the community who search for clouds amid sunny skies will invariably point to the Gary Sparks appointment with glee.

“Ha!” they’ll sneer. “It’s back to the future” for Mayor John Spring, who reached back into the Chuck Scholz administration to hire a new director of administrative services to replace Kenny Cantrell, who retired May 29.

Sparks was Scholz’s director of administrative services from 1993 to 1999, and how he’ll be Spring’s right-hand man starting in late August.

Some of the nay-sayers will no doubt take some jabs at Spring, who has been trying for four years to emerge from Scholz’s shadow.

But Spring has an answer for those people. He simply insists he picked the right man for the job.

Spring said he interviewed three candidates from inside city government and four outsiders, including Sparks. “I just felt at this time Gary was the best choice,” Spring said.

Spring had high praise for Sparks at a Friday morning press conference an in interviews — for good reason.

Sparks received generally strong reviews during his previous tenure as director of administrative services. He’s intelligent, likable, hard working and strives to get along with people.

He’s also a good manager who has vast experience with budgets and labor negotiations.

“Gary is very good with numbers and always has been,” Spring said.

He’s also good at the bargaining table.

“That’s another feather in Gary’s cap,” Spring said. “He has a lot of experience in dealing with that — as a matter of fact, more experience than anyone I interviewed.”

Sparks, a former Democratic alderman for 12 1/2 years, is coming off a highly successful 13-month stint as executive director of the Quincy Housing Authority, where he also received high marks for his administrative skills. He’s credited with helping turn around some troubling trends in a fairly brief period.

“Gary’s done a terrific job over there in the short time that he’s been director,” Spring said. “He put the Quincy Housing Authority on solid ground and just kept it moving forward.”

Spring said this shows Sparks has some natural administrative and leadership ability.

“I think Gary, when he came in there, just realized that they needed to do some things,” Spring said. “Gary had the experience and the knowledge to get those things done.”

One person who praised Spring’s appointment was Scholz, the former mayor.

“There’s nobody better suited for that position,” Scholz told The Herald-Whig. “He is a natural problem-solver and has a tremendous financial grasp.”

Scholz also said Sparks has is a level-headed individual with a great ability to get along with people.

Here’s one example of what Gary Sparks is all about. When we inquired about his current salary with the QHA, Sparks noted that he currently earns $68,000 a year. He said he was slated to get a raise to $71,000 last December, but he refused to take it.

“I waived the increase because I had to lay some folks off, and I didn’t feel like it was right for me to take an increase,” he said.

Sparks will be paid $85,000 in his new job, which is essentially what Cantrell was making. Spring, and many others, feel it will be money well spent.

Mayor John Spring plans to hold a press conference at 9:30 a.m. Friday to introduce a new director of administrative services to replace Ken Cantrell.

The mayor’s office issued a press advisory Thursday afternoon announcing the press conference, which will take place in the City Council chambers at City Hall.

Cantrell, 57, retired May 29 after working for the city for just over 20 years, including the last four years as Spring’s right-hand man.

Quincy resident Michael Black, who is urging the City Council to hold public forums during each weekly council meeting, received a response this week from a Freedom of Information Act request he filed with the city.

The FOIA request sought copies of all communications, including e-mails, between Corporation Counsel Andrew Staff and Mayor John Spring regarding Black’s citizen forum petition. He did this, he said, “to see what has happened to my petition,” which he presented at the council’s May 11 meeting.

Black received an e-mail response from Staff, who offered up a draft of a proposed public forum meetings ordinance that he prepared at the request of Spring after the May 11 meeting.

As was previously reported, Staff’s proposed ordinance calls for a public forum to be held once a month on a Wednesday night chaired by two council members on a rotating basis. This is not at all what Black had in mind with his petition, which he is still pursuing. But at least now he has a copy of Staff’s proposal in writing. Here’s what Staff sent him:

2.114 Public forum meetings — Monthly public forum meetings shall be held in the council chambers at City Hall on each third Wednesday of every month at the hour of 7 p.m., provided that if such meeting falls on a legal holiday, the meeting shall take place on the next day at the same hour and place. The purpose of the public forum meetings is to allow the citizens of the City of Quincy an opportunity to raise ideas, comments or concerns of matters related to the City of Quincy before representatives of City Council. The Mayor shall select, from time to time, two aldermen who will jointly chair the public forum meetings. The aldermanic chair persons may report back and make recommendations, if any, to City Council on any matter arising out of such public forum meetings. The public forum meetings shall be conducted in an informal but orderly manner, so as to allow open discussion and debate on City related matters. The aldermanic chair persons shall ultimately control the agenda of such public forum meetings and the manner in which they are conducted.

Black had this to say about the response from the city:

“At long last we now get to see the silly idea of a once-a-month meeting in writing. Alderman Jennifer Lepper had requested this weeks ago with no luck. So I put in a FOIA request. Of course, this isn’t actually in the form of an ordinance. So far, I haven’t found one person who actually supports this idea (except Mr. Staff and the Mayor). On the other hand, everybody I’ve talked to or read supports having the forum at every council meeting. So the disconnect between Mayor Spring and virtually ALL of his constituents is quite apparent to me. And I think the city council proved this point when they unanimously voted to let Steve McQueen speak this week on his subject of “anything.” I don’t think anybody on the council will vote against my ordinance — it would be nigh on to political suicide. And, being an ordinance reading they may have to vote against it three times! Not likely me thinkst…”