Shelia Wright Lets It Rip

Shelia Wright is blaming the media.

After the City Council luncheon Tuesday, I interviewed Councilwoman SheliaWright, who is running for re-election.

I spoke with her about a number of issues and her race with challenger Cindy Rushefsky.

But when I returned to my desk at KY3, I found two voicemails waiting for me from Sheila Wright, where she blasts the media for failing to properly cover the issues in the city.

Keep in mind that these are voicemails. Both are transcribed in their entirety below:

2:54 p.m. . . 2 minutes
"David, Shelia Wright with Springfield City Council. I was letting you know, you all missed a very important meeting, which was a public meeting notice, of the Finance Committee. We talked about investment policy for bond proceeds, in addition to that we talked about amending our legislative agenda for allowing the city and the city of St. Louis to possibly have a tax where we could do a vote of the people for things such as public safety, police and fire pensions, public health, that sort of stuff. You all missed that meeting. Plus, we also discussed unpaid parking tickets and implementing a policy for placing a a boot on cars that have 3 to 4 something like that, unpaid parking tickets and there was a public meeting notice and the meeting went for about an hour and a half. There was no media there. We had people from our community there that we're talking as well as staff people from the city and our departments. It would've been an awesome thing for some of the media to be there to talk about the possibility for these new things to go through. But none of this was done behind closed doors. It was a public meeting notice, a public meeting. Anyone was welcome. And there were probably 12 to 15 people there who attended the meeting that were not staff of council or assistant city managers or public works, not public works . . . I'm sorry, city manager and the police chief and other persons. So it was not an undercover meeting or behind closed doors meeting. It's just that no one showed up to cover it, plus there was also on the Internet, the fact we were going to be meeting. This just confirms that my opponent, who states we do things behind closed doors, is what I inferred from talking with you, is incorrect. It's just that . . . Message Cuts Off

2:57 p.m. . .1 minute and 40 seconds.
"David, it's Shelia, finishing up. I was letting you know that I feel that there is so much going on at the city that unfortunately our news media persons choose to wait until everything has been hashed out and bring things forward as it was a spur of the moment decision, and none of these are spur of the moment type decisions. There are things that we have been discussing among ourselves in our open lunch meetings or committee meeting and they are moving forward. And it is really a shame that we do not have more interest in our community from our news media. An interesting note, is that both Mayor Carlson and I both have our background degrees in journalism and are familiar with what we learned as bachelor college students what should be news information. And it's just very disappointing that the information we consider news is not getting out. And we're really having a difficult time getting that out because we've not chosen to go into the newspaper business ourselves. But David, good luck, and hopefully you'll be able to pay a little more attention to what's going on at the city so that you can get all the information out in a timely manner. Thank you for your interview and you all have a good evening. And I'll be in class tonight between 5:15 and 7:30. Thank you. Bye-bye."

Tune in to KY3 News @ 10 tonight for my report on the Shelia Wright versus Cindy Rushefsky race. And of course, more to come right here.

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