Comments for tonight’s council meeting (July 14, 2015)

My name is Greg Raven, and I live here in Apple Valley.

A week ago the Town held a scoping meeting to introduce the initial Environmental Impact Report on the proposed hostile takeover of Apple Valley Ranchos by the Town. It was an important meeting, I was disappointed that not one council member attended.

I was also disappointed that so little notification was given to the public about the meeting, and that while the meeting was ostensibly to get input from the public about the report, the report itself was not available to the public beforehand.

I was further disappointed at the Town’s extreme reluctance to improve the notification process going forward.

But most disappointing was the behavior of one of your assistant town managers, who called an important member of our community a liar for repeating what town council members have been saying for months, and what in fact is still shown on the Town’s H2Ours website to this day.

I’ll leave aside for the moment that it is not up to an employee of the town to disparage, defame, or slander any member of our community. I’ll also leave aside for the moment the fact that we pay this employee nearly a quarter of a million dollars a year to serve our community.

Instead, I would remind the council that we residents of Apple Valley did not elect or even have the chance to vote on the hiring of any town employee. We have no recourse to the ballot box should they not serve our community as it should be served. Therefore, if we have a problem with an employee of the town, we are forced to rely on you, the council, to champion our cause. We elected you to represent us. It is not your job to defend such employees, as you have in the past, or to attempt to excuse or mitigate their actions.

I’ve asked before that this employee be terminated for cause, and submit this latest incident as further evidence of the necessity of this action.

I await your response.

Greg Raven is Co-Chair of Apple Valley Citizens for Government Accountability, and is concerned about quality of life issues.