We are all for amity and cooperation when it comes to city government, but we cannot help but admire the official who stands up in the face of overwhelming odds and says, “Wait a minute…!”

David Lewis, a member of the Pilot Point city charter commission, did just that Monday, on principle, and good for him.

We have carefully watched our neighbors in Pilot Point as they have gone about the quietly exciting process of preparing a charter preparatory to becoming a home-rule city. It is perfectly understandable, and not altogether wrong, for residents to strive for consensus as they make such momentous decisions, but there is also something to be said for swimming against the tide.

Lewis voted against his fellow commission members Monday when they decided against including a property tax-rate cap and a conflict-of-interest provision in the proposed charter.

Upon reading the reporting of the event by the Record-Chronicle’s Peggy Heinkel-Wolfe, we were not surprised to learn that Lewis is the editor and publisher of the Pilot Point Post-Signal, a doughty weekly newspaper that has never been reluctant to speak its mind.

The paper once became so indignant over a comment made by our editorialist about affairs in that town that it unilaterally kicked us off its paid circulation list, sending us a cash rebate for the remainder of our subscription. We had never been deemed unworthy of subscribing to a newspaper before, but the surprise and disappointment of that rebuff were tempered by our admiration for a paper that would spurn needed revenue in order to make a point, the point in this case being that the Denton Record-Chronicle was harboring a gourd-headed, smart-mouthed editorial writer.

For the record, we find that David Lewis was exactly half right in his objections before the commission. We have had problems right here in Denton with conflicts of interest in city government, and we are not particularly happy with the way our city has handled them. In Denton, it seems to be perfectly OK for an elected official to have a conflict of interest as long as he or she files a paper admitting that there is a conflict of interest. This gives the officeholder a certain amount of posterior coverage; he or she can claim at election time that the voters are holding a referendum on the conflict at the same time as they vote for their mayor or council members. If it’s OK with the voters, well, then it’s OK.

This is the same mentality that used to condone legally mandated “white” and “colored” drinking fountains, and we say it’s horsefeathers. So, too, apparently, does David Lewis.

As for his advocacy of a property tax-rate cap, we have to part company. We know of no other Texas city that has one, and we certainly can’t think of a reason why Pilot Point would want to embark on its as-yet uncharted journey as a home-rule city by imposing one upon itself from the get-go.

There are ways for residents to seek relief from an oppressive tax rate. They are not simple or easy, but they shouldn’t be. The existing machinery for redress of tax grievances is accessible enough to accommodate a legitimate rollback movement by a cross-section of the public but difficult enough to discourage the semi-pro tax whiners and all-purpose cranks who constantly complain about shelling out their fair share of taxes. Denton has them; we’d bet that Pilot Point does, too, and we’d also bet that everybody in Pilot Point knows who they are.

This is not to denigrate David Lewis’ motives in advocating a tax cap. He has already proven his civic bona fides to us by refusing to let us subscribe to his newspaper. You have to admire a man like that.

Besides, he is batting .500 on two controversial issues. In baseball, that would get him in the Hall of Fame.