Sam Schwalm blasts Pugel over PSWID recall

There will be a PSWID (Pine Strawberry Water Improvement District) Board meeting January 16th at 5:00 PM in the Pine Cultural Center in Pine, where Supervisor Tommie Martin will talk about what is happening with the District now that it is under County control. Please try to attend if you can. 

Hello Neighbor, 

I hope that the holidays were full of family and fun for you.

Five board members, Mr. Ray Pugel, Mr. Gary Lovetro, Mr. Richard Dickinson, Mr. Ron Calderon, and Mr. Mike Claxton resigned in mass on November 16th. In doing so, they broke the quorum of the PSWID board which resulted in control of PSWID (Pine Strawberry Arizona Water Improvement District) being handed to the Gila County Board of Supervisors. Their resignations came when it became clear that the signature collection effort for the recall would be successful and that there was little chance that they would survive the recall election.

I have a few thoughts on the resignations that I would like to share. In a later email I will talk about what the challenges are for PSWID going forward.

1.    A historical note, when Mr. Pugel’s financial interests were threatened by the K2 well, he organized a recall of the prior board. There was no concern then about the cost of the recall election (PSWID paid just under $20,000), there was no hand-wringing about fracturing the community, and there were no calls to delay elections so that the public could calm down. The board members back then did the honorable thing and made their case about why they should be retained, and then the community decided. When it is the community organizing a recall to protect their own financial interests, Mr. Pugel paints the effort as illegitimate. One has to wonder why he seems so terrified with the idea that the community should control the destiny of PSWID.

2.    Another historical note, this is not the first time that resignations have been used to throw the control of PSWID back to the County. Back in the 2002-3003 timeframe, PSWID had a five member board and two members had resigned for various reasons, rather than fill the open spots, the board chairman at the time, realtor Mary Lou Meyers, resigned and broke the quorum. At the time PSWID had $250,000, that money was all gone by the time that the County handed PSWID back. I spent an afternoon several years ago leafing through the files from that time. The County hired Mr. John Gliege (who was Mr. Pugel’s lawyer for his actions against Brooke and PSWID’s first lawyer until he passed away in 2011) and Mr. Harry Jones (who later assisted Mr. Pugel in the recall of the prior board at County expense and became the first District Manager after PSWID was purchased). Their efforts appear to have been solely focused on finding ways to bankrupt the Pine and Strawberry water companies so that they could be purchased cheaply. To achieve that, the two spent their efforts, and our money, trying to block a rate increase for Pine Water and in trying to get the Arizona Corporation Commission (ACC) to revoke the water company’s right to provide service.

3.    It has been claimed that the resignations were done because the resigning board members were concerned about what the recall election would have cost PSWID. However, the timing of the resignations indicates that the real goal was to throw the control of PSWID over to the County in order to prevent the community from deciding PSWID’s future. In the recall process, once the signatures have been validated and a recall is going to happen, each board member would have been given five days to decide whether or not they wanted to resign. If a board member elects to resign at that point, the listed opponent would have taken the seat. If all four board members that were being recalled resigned at that time, PSWID would not be charged for the cost the election. Control of PSWID would have stayed with the PSWID board and the community.

4.    It is no secret that Mr. Pugel has spent a great deal of effort over the past 15 plus years to get control of the water system. It is no secret that he and Supervisor Tommie Martin are very close, so much so that she used Gila County funds to support the recall effort that Mr. Pugel organized. Mr. Pugel’s parting wish is that the election of a new board be delayed until next November so that the public can “calm down” and that the County should hire Mr. John Nelson to run PSWID in the interim.

a.    It is interesting that the man who resigns in the face of defeat gets to dictate the terms of his replacement. In order to have an election in May rather than November, the Board of Supervisor’s has to call for an election by January 20th. Supervisor Martin has resisted requests for calling that election. The next meeting of the County Board of Supervisors is January 21st, so the foot dragging on the part of Supervisor Martin will deliver to Mr. Pugel his first request.
b.    To this point it isn’t clear whether Supervisor Martin will deliver on Mr. Pugel’s second request. Perhaps that will become clear at the January 16th PSWID meeting. My experience with Mr. Nelson is that he seems like a decent well-meaning person, but Mr. Pugel wouldn’t have specifically asked for him if he didn’t think he could accomplish what he wants through him.
c.    Oh and by the way, where did all that concern over the cost of the recall election go? Hiring Mr. Nelson would cost much more than the recall election would have. 

5.  Mr. Pugel has long been obsessed with controlling what the public knows about the water system and the conclusions people make. I was on KMOG several years ago and he called up some of the people who had asked questions to “educate” them. My first experience with Mr. Pugel was when I wrote an editorial for the Payson Patriot that was approving of the K2 well. He hounded me until I met with him so that he could “educate” me. He clearly had gone through his spiel many times and I have run into a dozen or more people since then that had the same experience. More recently he complained many times about the attendance at PSWID meetings and the general lack of desire by the public to be “educated”. He worked REALLY hard to get the reporter covering PSWID for the Payson Roundup removed because he didn’t like the information being put into the articles. He and his surrogates have for many years claimed that Water For Pine Strawberry (WFPS) spreads “misinformation”. However, in all that time they have never provided any specific examples. Suffice it to say that Mr. Pugel’s definition of “misinformation” is any fact or viewpoint that he doesn’t want you to hear.

Sam Schwalm (PSWID Board Member)