PLEASE CHECK OUT OUR NEW VIDEO TO THE LEFT OF THIS COLUMN ABOUT CHAVIRA’S MOMENT WITH ANTHONY LEBLANC, OWNER OF ICEARIZONA BEFORE VOTING APPROVAL OF THEIR $15 MILLION A YEAR MANAGEMENT CONTRACT.

The August 4th edition of the Glendale Star ran the following under Letters to the Editor.

An open letter to Mark Burdick

“Dear Mr. Burdick:

We are writing you in response to your comments to the editorial staff of The Glendale Star. Specifically, your astounding admission that you were knowingly and deliberately attempting to deceive the voters of Glendale by misrepresenting the record and accomplishments of our current mayor, Jerry Weiers. You explained that your advisors told you that you needed to lie in order to have a chance of winning the race, but this, in no way, relieves you of the responsibility of your deceit.

Your campaign consultants may have advised you to lie, but you willingly agreed to do it. You stood before the people of Glendale and lied. You wrote editorials to newspapers that contained lies. And even after being confronted, you doubled down on the lies.

It is our belief that while a campaign over legitimate policy differences is healthy and worthy of our city, you have run the most dishonorable race imaginable. You cannot lead a city if you cannot be honest with the citizens of that city. Nor would we want you to.

Accordingly, we believe that, through your dishonest actions and gleeful confession, you have disqualified yourself as a legitimate candidate for mayor and we ask that you withdraw from this race. It is unfair to subject the voters of Glendale to another month of lies masquerading as a political campaign.”

Respectfully,

Ray Malnar, Councilmember

Ian Hugh, Vice Mayor

Bobby Casares

John LeGendre

Larry Rovey

Ron Kolb

Norma Alvarez

Adela Guerra

Laura Hirsch

Bobby Gonzalo

Bill Kelleher

Richard and Mickey Lund

Randy Miller, USMC Ret

Tom Traw

Jeff Blake

The reason I have posted this Letter to the Editor is Sammy Chavira, who supports Mark Burdick for Mayor (and after all, why wouldn’t he…they are both in fire; one a former Chief and the other currently a Phoenix fire fighter) took a page out of Mark Burdick’s style of campaigning. He took a kernel of truth and misrepresented it beyond recognition.

Another pro-Chavira mailer hit the streets today. This time paid by Revitalize Arizona with major funding by Residents for Accountability. It’s my understanding that a PAC that spends money on behalf of a Glendale candidate must be registered with the Glendale City Clerk. As of August 4th, neither of these PACs is registered with the Glendale City Clerk according to the City Clerk’s website. In fact, OpenSecrets.org says, “This PAC does not exist in the 2016 election cycle. Try another cycle.” The Residents for Accountability PAC is registered with the City of Tempe but was only active in 2012 and 2013.

It’s another one of those pesky “Independent mailers” supposedly unknown to candidate Chavira nor coordinated with his campaign committee. Haven’t we seen this disclaimer before with his previous mailer? You bet we have. If one had the time to dig deep enough the connections between these two PACs and Sammy would be discovered.

Sammy’s mailer takes one fact: that I chaired the Risk Management and Workers Compensation Trust Fund as the city council representative. That is a fact and is true.

Sammy’s mailer implies that I was a participant or condoned the misappropriation of taxpayer dollars while serving on this board. That is not a fact and not true.

I served as Chairperson of the Board during my last year of council service in 2012. An audit of the money in the Risk Management Trust Fund and Workers Compensation trust fund was conducted in 2012. The misappropriation of funds by city staff members that had the responsibility of managing the funds on a daily basis had occurred several years earlier.

I was not chairperson of the board at the time of misappropriation but I did chair the board when it was discovered and when the solutions to fixing the problems were crafted. The board immediately released its findings with a series of corrective measures to prevent it from happening again — to the city council which accepted the recommendations unanimously.

Sammy’s mailer also says, “…helped lead a spending spree that nearly bankrupted our city.” It’s just another Burdick-like lie. Boy, I wish I had had that kind of power! Things would be a lot different.

No, the spending spree lies at the feet of former Mayor Elaine Scruggs and her band of crony councilmembers. She had the majority of votes on council that approved much of it and included former Councilmembers Yvonne Knaack and Manny Martinez, both of whom have endorsed Mark Burdick.

The mailer goes on to say, “…she called the auditors ‘nitpicky’.” Lie. I did not. I was shocked to learn of the misappropriations and supported all of the conclusions in the auditors’ report. I did say that I thought some of the irrelevant details in the report were “nitpicky.” One word – yet taken completely out of context.

Again, let me remind you all of the accusations against Chavria are fact based upon his decisions and actions and reported in detail in various media, both TV and the newspapers.

As was stated in the above letter, it is unfair to subject the voters of the Yucca district to another month of lies masquerading as a political campaign.”

Sammy has done the same that Burdick has done by misrepresenting the record and accomplishments.” Is it any wonder that Sammy is endorsing Burdick? There’s an old adage, “Birds of a feather flock together.”

These men are part of a “flock” that has no place in the leadership of Glendale.

© Joyce Clark, 2016

FAIR USE NOTICE

This site contains copyrighted material the use of which is in accordance with Title 17 U.S. C., Section 107. The ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in Section 107 of the US Copyright Law and who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democratic, scientific and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such material. For more information go to http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use,’ you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.