Mayor Ronald Targets Health Board for Removal
A power struggle at City Hall pits the mayor against the Board of Sanitation over alleged incompetence, extravagance, and professional disrespect.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Mayor J.T. Ronald has served notice upon Dr. F.A. Churchill, Dr. James Shannon, and Dr. Samuel J. Holmes, members of the Board of Sanitation, to appear before him on Wednesday at the city hall to show cause why they should not be removed from office. The mayor’s charges center on their refusal to fire Health Officer Dr. Sparling. The mayor accuses Sparling of negligence, specifically for falsely approving bills for work performed at the pest house and charging the city for nineteen unnecessary personal visits to the facility. Furthermore, the mayor alleges the board treated official inquiries with 'insult and contumely,' which he claims has disrupted the harmonious operation of the city government and jeopardized public health.
“They not only failed to ask for specifications or to remove [him], but, on the contrary, without reason or excuse, and in ignorance of the official courtesies pertaining to your office, treated the official request with insult and contumely.”
The friction between an elected mayor and an appointed board over bureaucratic mismanagement and the handling of infectious disease feels remarkably familiar to the politics of modern public health administration in Seattle.
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