Ah, "The Great Ruffino" in another dramatic moment...
JUST MY OPINION:
In his 18 years on the Town Council, Supervisor Ruffino appears to have repeatedly used the budget process to advance his political, and in this case, personal fortunes.
When the political climate required, he was a tax and spend liberal for many years; when that political climate reversed, he flavored his votes and utterances with fiscal conservatism; when ambivalence may have prevailed, he, on four occasions, was not present for fiscal year budget votes: A whopping 25% of all such budgets for which he was eligible to vote.
More specifically, regarding the 2020 budget, Ruffino curiously missed budget amendment deadlines, only to make some high-profile, but entirely inappropriate budget cutting proposals the very night before election day, November 4, 2019. Even more suspiciously, those proposals were preceded by a last-minute mailer heralding impotent and untested proposals.
Now, he complains, loudly and vocally, that the Supervisor's stipend for 2020 was excluded from the same 2020 budget that he so manipulated and voted for, by a collusive Council in order to personally "spite" him.
More troubling, a significant issue during the 2019 campaign was the continued promulgation of the longstanding "Old Boys' Club," which many voters, taxpayers, and residents held honored patronage and politics, to the exclusion of placing the needs and concerns of the town front and center.
It seemed that during the 2019 campaign, Mr. Ruffino, his eighteen years of continuous service notwithstanding, touted a renewal of what many consider to have been of a long-since-forgotten 2001 commitment to confront the issues facing a town experiencing the growing pains of development, or perhaps more accurately, over-development: Declining infrastructure, public safety issues, green space, and high taxes.
In connection with the instant stipend matter, I hold that for the Supervisor, in what I understand to have been his very first agenda item, for the very first Council meeting under his direction, to prioritize the stipend (which would impact the calculations towards increasing his personal pension) over those issues described above, may have reduced his own 2019 pledges to hallow campaign rhetoric, and his promised priorities to the world of casual concerns.
In my opinion, with Supervisor Ruffino, it would seem that the People's Office of Supervisor may have been brushed by the fanciful wings of the Peter Pan Syndrome. In that regard, I believe that the Supervisor's radio presentation to the town's stakeholders took the form of a tantrum-like rant; an excited utterance of a self-absorbed petulant brat, whose language skills do not include a lucid understanding of the word "No!"