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Politics & Government

Sugarplum and Other Fairies

An email exchange over the Sugarplum fairy leads to more questions than answers.

Sometimes I cannot keep my opinion to myself. I recently got hooked on the articles, Bill McClellan’s column and television news reports on the Sugarplum Fairy incident in St. Charles. I know this isn’t specifically about Chesterfield, but Sugarplum Fairies are part of us all.  

Laura Coppinger for six years performed in the Old St. Charles business district as the Sugarplum Fairy. This year the city decided to hire Christmas performers as part time city employees instead of using a contract service. This meant they need to take a required city drug test.

When Coppinger went for her drug teat she filled the cup with her urine, then deposited the rest of her urine in the toilet and did what we all do. She flushed. She was told by flushing the toilet her sample could not be accepted and she would need to wait several hours and give another sample. Upon hearing this Coppinger let out an expletive deleted or perhaps several. Apparently the drug testing company called the St. Charles Human Resources department, upset over Coppinger’s vocal opinion, and she was told she would not be offered the job.

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Lots of bad publicity then flowed in the direction of the City of St. Charles. Mayor Sally Faith made a statement that the city could not hire a person who used such inappropriate language.

Now I have no idea what Coppinger said, but have worked for 30 years for city and county governments, and I cannot believe it could be any worse than what is said daily in St. Charles by at least some of the 112 cops, 80 firefighters, not to mention the street department and sewer employees. If Mayor Faith started getting rid of city employees for uttering vulgar language on occasion, very little services would be performed by city employees because there would not be many of them around.

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Last week I sent an email to the St. Charles Chamber of Commerce and sent a copy to Mayor Faith.  I mentioned that I planned to skip going to St. Charles this year at Christmas time because of what the city is doing to a person who perform well for the last six years over an isolated incident.

Here is part of an email I received from Mayor Faith:

This individual chose to use extensive profanity numerous times with medical facility staff and again continued this language with the City Human Resources staff.  The City received a complaint from the facility with regard to her conduct. In fact, I would go even further in underscoring that we would not hire anyone to work for the City of St. Charles who behaved in such an unacceptable manner. So, as a prospective employee of the City, she was never fired, as she was never actually hired to participate in the 2011 festival. “

In turn I sent mayor Faith this email:

Thanks Mayor for the response.

However since the actor was not a city employee I don’t believe this would be a personnel matter. You have to hire them before everyone can hide behind the “personnel matter” banner.  I hate to see you fall on your sword and hurt yourself politically and St. Charles in the eyes of the Metro area by not saying what happened if it would tell a different side of the story.  I think this story has reached the point where the Citizens of St. Charles would probably like to know.  

Thanks again for the reply,

John Hoffman

My point was, you can’t comment on something and say in writing that the person said terrible things, but then say you can’t say exactly what they said because it was a personnel issue, when the person is not an employee.  

 I got this answer from mayor Faith:

 John,

Well, it is a “personnel matter” because it happened between this person and our personnel.  For now, that is all I can say.  I hope in time you will understand and eventually agree with the decision.

In the meantime, I hope you continue to enjoy all the holiday festivities that we have to offer because I think this is a great City.

Thanks,

Sally

Now Mayor Faith says because someone said something to a city employee she can’t say what it was. That is interesting, since police and fire department reports are open public records and quote people talking to city employees all the time.  

This would have been a perfect situation for Mayor Faith to mediate, obtain a written apology from the Sugarplum Fairy to the people at the testing company and the human resource folks. Give the fairy a letter of caution attached to her employment. Put the drug testing contractor on notice to post signs informing people not to flush the toilet or lose the city’s business.

I recently spent a couple of weeks with couples from Ireland and England. They used the phrase “they are away with the fairies” to nicely describe some people others might referred to as crazy, delusional or difficult. On this matter I think Mayor Faith is maybe away with the fairies.

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