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Pakersburg mayor’s resignation is the right decision

Bob Newell is the only person ever elected to three consecutive terms as mayor of Parkersburg. That alone suggests the city’s former police chief was able to attract and sustain the confidence of a majority of voters in the River City.

However, no one holds public office for an extended period without making a few mistakes along the way, becoming embroiled in controversies, and raising the ire of a segment of the citizenry. And as writer Arthur Bloch said, “Friends come and go, but enemies accumulate.”

Newell attracted his share through the years, especially because of his battles with the Parkersburg Civil Service Commission over appointments and police department hirings and his support of a $2.50 city user fee.

Those kinds of controversies are often survivable, but Newell then made a critical mistake; he had an affair with the city’s finance director Ashley Flowers. The indiscretion became public—very public—when recordings of lengthy phone conversations between the two were leaked.

Naturally the tapes were embarrassing, but they also made Newell sound like an angry and desperate man who was willing to conspire with his paramour to try to tamp down the mushrooming controversy.

Higher-level politicians have survived sex scandals and we are more likely today to dismiss adultery by public officials as a private matter. However, Newell’s lapse in judgment involving a city employee under his management, along with the volume of material about the affair, provided a powerful wedge for his opponents.

Newell’s dogged critics accumulated a wide ranging list of allegations of mayoral mismanagement and planned to present the evidence to a three-judge panel beginning this morning.

Newell apparently believed he could refute the financial misconduct charges, but then his case received a serious setback this week; the panel decided testimony about the adulterous affair would be allowed. Newell’s wife, Debbie, was on the witness list.

This was not going to be pretty.

The mayor may have thought he could win the battle, but the outcome of the war was another matter.  “The reason I’m doing this is, number one, for my family, but number two, the city,” Newell said during his resignation speech Wednesday. “There has been a lot of press coverage that hasn’t been good for the city… not a good image.”

And that’s why Newell made the right decision to step down. The controversy divided the community and cast a shadow over city government. It’s time for everybody to move on.

 





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