Wall: Council not doing its job

E. Bryan Wall is one of the contenders for Tuesday's City Council seat. He is running against Pat Butler. — © 2009 Gallup Independent / Brian Leddy

Copyright © 2009
Gallup Independent
By Bill Donovan
Staff writer

GALLUP — For Emmett Bryan Wall, the perfect symbol of why he should be elected to the Gallup City Council is located in the western part of town.

“The city sewer plant should not have an odor,” he said. “If it does, the City Council has not been doing its job.”

Wall, who surprised a lot of people by getting the most votes in the City Council election for the southside district in the March election, said he could give example after example of things that the council has just ignored during the time his opponent, Pat Butler, has been in office.

“That’s why I think it is time for a change,” he said.

When he was a state representative some 26 years ago, the city’s sewer plant was also on his mind, which is why, he said, that he worked hard to get state funds to improve the plant and to enact laws that would require plants like the one in Gallup to hire certified engineers to be on staff.

“And you have to wonder what Pat Butler has been doing for the past 16 years on this and other issues,” he said.

Sixteen years ago, he added, the city’s golf course was in a pretty decent condition, but during Butler’s time in office, he has watched as it deteriorated to the point where few golfers enjoy playing there anymore. “This still could be a good course but you have to have someone there who cares,” he said.

“The attitude of the government seems to be ‘that’s just the way it is,’” he said, adding that this kind of attitude is why Gallup is in the shape it is now.

Older residents in Gallup probably remember Wall from the time he owned and operated the Holiday Nursery in town. That was before he left Gallup to go to Phoenix where he worked in the jewelry business and in real estate.

“I never really left Gallup,” he said, pointing out that during his years in Phoenix he came back constantly to visit relatives.

“I have a big family here and I came for weddings, funerals or just for visits,” he said, adding that this seems to be a trait in his family because his sister, who also moved from Gallup, goes online daily to keep up with what’s going on in the town.

“You get this when you spend a lot of time in a small community,” he said. “When you move to a bigger city, you keep in touch.”

And you also don’t get rid of your desire, he said, to see this community get better and that is why when he returned to Gallup a few years ago, he looked at what he saw and he wasn’t happy to see that many of the problems that were around when he left the area were still there being ignored.

He said he would have expected more from someone who has a business in town because during his campaign he has spoken to a number of business people who have said point blank that “they were not satisfied with the way the city was doing things.”

“How has Butler’s experience helped them?” he said.
Many of those he talked to on the campaign trail expressed their concerns about he way the city was treating business owners who wanted o improve their structures or expand.

Instead of giving them a helping hand, Wall said, many business owners told him of roadblocks city employees and inspectors set up.

“They said it seemed that all the city wanted to do is penalize them and cause delay after delay,” Wall said.
When he came back to retire to Gallup, he said one of the first things that he noticed was how dirty the streets of Gallup were.

“That’s not a big thing, but Gallup would look a lot better if the city were to clean up the streets and get rid of all of the debris,” he said.

The bottom line, he said, is that the election results in March showed that the people in Gallup wanted one thing — change.

The city runoff election is Tuesday.