And don’t forget to visit BY THE PEOPLE. Just click on the right. You can leave your comments on any subject there as well.
Oh its election time again and our options are more limited than normal…what is a voter to do? After the past 2 years of a corrupt council making the vast majority of their decisions behind closed doors or under the cloak of consent agenda items, this has been a quiet two years. No more of the in-public rancor of before, but is it better? Not hardly! Now bad things happen quietly instead of good things happening noisily. So we have no choice to vote for mayor. It is vote for Kenny (Evans) or leave the ballot blank. I plan to leave the ballot blank and not vote for mayor at all. It is our best choice. For council, there are 4 people running for 3 positions. Three of the candidates currently serve. So again, not very good options. Of the 3 incumbents, Ed Blair is the only one who has earned my vote to serve another term. He at least listens to citizens, talks with them and tries his best to represent them. I do not plan to vote for Mean Mike V. as it is obvious he is in cahoots with developers and wants to grow this town as big as he can as fast as he can. And Su also has not earned my vote. Though she tries to be sunshine and flowers, she is the exact opposite. So that leaves the new candidate Fred Carpenter. Fred is a tough one. I think he means well and would be an improvement over Su or Mike. So here is what I plan to do: Vote for Ed Blair. Vote for Fred Carpenter. Vote for no one else. Lets send a message that Ed Blair is the type of councilor we like and hopefully the others will get the message!
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Vote NO on Home Rule. If the Council has less money to spend, they can do less damage to our town!
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So Mike Vogel selects Board and Commission members based upon how long the individual lives in the area. He chooses a realtor who just moved to Payson this past year to serve on Planning and Zoning stating he was qualified because he lived in the area (Strawberry) for a long time! Since when does this make sense? Since Mike wanted to stack the Planning and Zoning with his realtor friends. I think he is hoping the economy will improve and we can start bulldozing our forests to build the 7 story buildings he is pushing for. Tell Mike Vogel no! Vote for someone else besides Mike Vogel for Council. Anyone else but Mike! Anyone but Mike! Anyone but Mike!
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I have always believed that the best possible education of our children is the key to a successful and prosperous society. Arizona in particular needs all of the support it can get for its school systems because of the woeful results reported year after year on a national comparison of educational accomplishment. Accordingly, I have contributed generously for several years here in Payson to the Credit for Kids program. This year I am not. Why? I expected to see my contributions used for the direct benefit of the kids. I expected the Credit for Kids money to be spent as a supplement for more educational supplies, library improvements, musical instruments and instruction, physical education programs, after school educational opportunities etc. At the same time I expected that state and local school funding would be spent wisely for similar purposes. Yet at Frontier Elementary School I see a new sign, unexplainably lighted at night, declaring the name of the school as if it were previously unknown and generally used to proclaim all the many days the school is scheduled to be closed or scheduled for half days. Worse, I see a new prison-like iron fence enclosing the school. This school, with its cheap dome construction containing almost no windows, already was like a dungeon. Now the children can grow up feeling even more fearful, isolated and separated from society. Oh, and lets not forget the expense of the new driveways and parking lots for the convenience of the teachers and ever so busy parents. If I thought my dollars would be used judiciously in combination with government funding for the full benefit of the children I would continue to contribute. Sadly, I perceive unwise and irresponsible management of these scarce funds by our local board and supervisors. Pity our future generations.
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When the Roundup decides to declare the drought over again, as they have done twice already, may the words of Arizona Republic Reporter Shaun McKinnon ring through their denseness. On Dec. 30, he wrote: “Long droughts do not end after one storm or one season or even one year…. Climatologists refused to put a period on Arizona’s dry streak, one that started in the middle of the previous decade (that would be the mid-1980s). Repeat after us, they said: One year does not a drought end.”
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A high school coach and a student get into a little skirmish and the local newspaper can’t wait to tell the sordid tale. Is this something that needed to be shared with the whole community – and the entire world? Is it all about selling newspapers (and advertising)? Does anybody at the Roundup give a damn about our image, about what’s really important to us as a community?
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The Roundup’s water series is a joke – and a very inaccurate one at that. I am on one of the local water boards in the area and I counted seven mistakes of fact in the latest installment. Pete Aleshire is in desperate need of an editor who can check the accuracy of what he spews. Remember folks, just because the Roundup says it’s true doesn’t make it so.
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Has anyone else noticed that the Rim Country News is history – to no one’s surprise. What a piece of junk that was. Shame on them for wasting perfectly good trees to print it. Good riddance.
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The person who wrote a recent rant criticizing Christmas and our savior Jesus Christ will surely burn in everlasting hellfire and damnation. This is a Christian nation, by God, and we will celebrate as we please.
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Commercialization of Christmas? You think? Let me count the ways. And then the Christians get bent out of shape because Christmas is becoming religion-neutral. Why aren’t they outraged about how the true meaning of the holiday has been wrung out of it by the retail establishment. As they like to put it, what would Jesus think?
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How about a Rave for a change. Many thanks to Chris and Maria Higgins for filling the coffee house void by moving Scoops next to Sawmill Theaters and expanding its offerings. Losing Fireside Espresso was a big hit for our little community. A town without a coffee shop is a poor town indeed. Now it’s up to us to make Chris and Maria’s investment pay off. Visit Scoops before or after the movies – or anytime you need a little caffeine.
1 comment:
Regarding the spending of money at FES: Just a few clarifications.
1) It is my understanding that the sign was the old sign at RCMS. And when polled, most parents say that they get information about school closures from marquee signs.
2) Safety is a huge priority at schools and MOST schools are now fenced in. The reason: Keep the kids in and the bad guys out. I know everyone wants to believe that Payson is safe, and I believe that it is safer than Phoenix, but the fact is bad things sometimes happen and the best defense is a good offense.
3) If you want to know about the GREAT things that are done with Credit for Kids donations...ask a kid that has been able to be in band & music programs, perform in a play, go on educationally based field trips, play a sport or participate in after school activites, experiment with real world science problems and the list goes on. Without Credit for Kids, this cannot happen.
4) Don't punish the kids because you don't have all of the facts.
5) The parking lot (or lack there of) was a huge safety issue for the students. Have you ever tried to be in that area at 8:00AM or 2:30PM. Students deserve to be safe, and part of safety is having ample room for vehicles. I would hate for a student to be ran over because a person could not figure out where to go and had no place to park.
6) The money used to put up the fence and add parking was bond money that can only use on construction.
I may be biased, my four children have all attended FES. I love my home school and am proud of the changes that they have made to make my two daughters that are still attending there safe.
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