Shill crazy after all these years (February 11, 2016)

How refreshing to have someone from the Town of Apple Valley say out loud what they must each think of us mere residents (Liberty denies hiring ‘shills’, Daily Press, February 11, 2016). Of course, it had to be the innumerate Assistant Town Manager Marc Puckett making the accusations, as he has before shown himself to be unafraid of attacking and defaming members of our community in public.

After years of sub-standard workmanship and bad advice for the Town Council, it appears now that Puckett has caught a break. While concerned citizens have for years been attempting to make any sense at all of his unique brand of award-winning financial leadership of our town, now he has Liberty Apple Valley as a convenient boogey-man to deflect criticism or even examination of his work product on behalf of the people. Of course, even this hasn’t stopped residents from wondering why Puckett runs to the Town attorney ($$$$$) with seemingly every public records request.

To give just one example of the transparency with which concerned citizens must grapple when seeking public information, on January 26th of this year, Puckett presented a so-called transparency report to the Town Council. It consisted of his comments, a PowerPoint slide show, a printed document purporting to be the transparency report itself, and an attached enemies list. Even though the Town has two web sites for disseminating information (one solely for promoting the hostile takeover of our water system), and even though each of these web sites has sections for council documents (one even has a special section labelled Transparency!), it took until February 10th, when I e-mailed the Town public information officer about when these documents would be made available online, for any of these documents to appear. Even then, it was only the slide show, which Puckett repeatedly said during his presentation contained illegible information. It’s anyone’s guess if the legible information is still forthcoming.

The concerned citizens Puckett decries have caught the Town in multimillion dollar accounting errors, so maybe Puckett isn’t the best source concerning who is acting in the best interest of our community.

Worse of all, this isn’t the first time the Town has employed this tactic.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: The Town Council must fire Marc Puckett for cause. Well, I can dream, can’t I?

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

Published: Daily Press, February 25, 2016