To the editor:

Hypocrites on Sunshine Law

To the editor:

The right to recall our public officials, like the right to bear arms, deserves to be exercised responsibly. The decision to say “yes” to recall then requires selection of replacements for those to be recalled. How does one make this second decision in a responsible manner in the time available to “get to know” the would be replacements?

The decision to subject Pueblo West to the costs associated with this recall was made by only 2 percent of our registered voters. Ironically, these costs have been forced upon us by the very persons who complain that it was wrong to have incurred the costs necessary to have concluded Beaudry v. Eichman, the settlement of which probably saved Pueblo West at least $100,000. Is there a likelihood that our present three challenged directors are going to do something major to adversely affect our metropolitan district? If not, then how is the exercise of this recall different from the circumstances when someone with a firearm decides to “shoot first and ask questions later?"

For those who favor pulling this recall trigger out of unhappiness that Don Saling is no longer our district manager, ask yourselves how you feel about our open meetings (“Sunshine”) law. “Sunshine” was the issue with our prior board of directors in Beaudry v. Eichman. Then Chairperson Eichman and District Manager Saling had repeatedly told us that the details of the discussions concerning our “airport land” could not be disclosed because the board had entered into a “confidentiality agreement” with PEDCo. In a Dec. 7, 2004, letter, a copy of which is now provided to The View, Mr. Saling declared: “There is a confidentiality agreement with PEDCo signed by the District Manager in his role as an Ex-officio PEDCo Board Member." After PEDCo denied it had ever entered into or even requested that Pueblo West agree to any confidentiality agreement, the Citizens for Open Government dismissed PEDCo from the litigation. On April 5, 2005, when the open-government plaintiffs continued to press the “confidentiality agreement” issue, Mr. Saling executed an affidavit, a copy of which is also now provided, declaring that what he had said in his Dec. 27, 2004, letter was “in error” and that there never was a “confidentiality agreement” with PEDCo! Paragraph No. 7 of that affidavit declares: “7.I have signed no “confidentiality agreement”, or any other similar agreement with PEDCo which binds the District or the Board or any individual Board Member in any way." We had repeatedly been told during the “Wal-Mart” controversy that the existence of a “confidentiality agreement” was the reason we could not be told the facts. Mr. Saling, clearly, was committed to keeping those facts “secret” from us as long as possible. Is the goal of this recall to re-establish special interest secrecy?

Ironically, the effort to recall the remaining three board members who voted to fire Mr. Saling is based upon the primary allegation that the decision to fire him was made in violation of “Sunshine." However, present board members Sloan, Vickers and Abel represent a “night-and-day” difference from our previous board in respect to openness and their commitment to “Sunshine” cannot be credibly challenged, especially by Mr. Saling.

Anyone who decides to come forward in agreement with the recall allegations by offering themselves as replacements, as has Mr. Chuck Green, should be pressed to declare how they viewed “sunshine” when it was raised in the Beaudry v. Eichman (Wal-Mart) litigation. What track record did any would be recall challenger establish in respect to the “Sunshine” process when it was at the front and center of the “Wal-mart” project issue? If they were silent about “Sunshine” then, especially in the case of Mr. Green with his newspaper column, why should any declared concern for “Sunshine” now be viewed as credible?

Serving on our board of directors, especially now, is as close to being a “thankless task” as one can imagine. That we still have three individuals willing to continue to do so in the face of this opposition is strong evidence of both their commitment and their character. If any of them are to be replaced, it should be by regular election and not by this groundless recall.

Lee N. Sternal
Pueblo West

Editor's note: Mr. Sternal was the attorney who represented the Pueblo West Citizens for Open Government in its lawsuit against the metro district. He provided The View with documents to support the quoted passages used in his letter to the editor.

Vote 'no' on wasteful recall

To the editor:

I am urging everyone who cares about how their tax money is spent to vote no to recall in the coming election. The recall committee obviously has no qualms about how our tax money is spent. They will spend as much tax money as they can to put "Mr. Let Me Spend Your Tax Money," Don Saling back into the district manager position.

Case in point their handpicked opponent of Bill Vickers, Chuck Green, who stands up at a board meeting and says, “Why would anyone want the job of district manager knowing that after the recall they will soon be unemployed?” If that does happen guess who pays the severance package and it isn’t the recall committee, it is the taxpayer.

Our tax money is paying for the recall election and in a few short months will pay for another regularly scheduled election to replace board members whose terms have expired. I don’t know how much of your money we are talking about but I assume it is at least twice the money we would have had to spend for an election in the future.

Thanks to the two articles written by Mr. Amos in Monday’s Pueblo Chieftain, we have an answer to Mr. Green’s question to the board about who would want to be district manager. Mr. Glenn sounds like the perfect person within who we can place our trust. His experience in the town of Monument is an example of the balance we need in Pueblo West. He knows how to make things happen in a growing community and he knows how to use and save our tax money. I say to Mr. Glenn if he decides to make our home his home, welcome.

Linda Freeman
Pueblo West

Vote to retain board members

To the editor:

Rather than roil over the unfounded accusations made in a petition for recall of Pueblo West board members made by a special interest group, lets look at some positive actions taken by this board:

• Accomplished the paving of Industrial Blvd. at half the earlier estimates by exploring more options on the work than had been previously considered;
• Recouped some of the overrun costs of the new fire station by assigning some of the sewer costs to the lots served by the line extension;
• Brought suit against Pueblo County for the potential loss of $5 million worth of water for the Pueblo Kayak course;
• Allowing district employees to participate in board meetings;
• Allowing more direct citizen observation at board meetings of district management decisions;
• Reviewing budget issues and questions in open board meetings, thereby allowing better citizen observation;
• Bringing the Committee of Architecture under direct board control to allow more citizen input and to explore an appeals process for the COA;
• Being open and above-board in all involvement with other government entities (Southern Delivery System, Pueblo County, etc.), support entities, and commercial interests, rather than operating covertly and in exclusive executive sessions.

The incumbent board is doing a fine job. Vote to retain the incumbent board members in the forthcoming recall election.

Rosemary Mooney
Pueblo West

Dedication required of board member

To the editor:

Voters will confront a choice of open or closed government as the central issue of recall. All residents need to know that current board members for Pueblo West have set higher standards of openness and performance, as demanded by voters in 2006 and 2008. New candidates who appear for this sudden, unnecessary August election should be questioned closely for details of their plans and why and how they would be good choices, despite the short time to check them out.

What kinds of dedication and skills are needed for serving Pueblo West on the board now and in the future? This is an unpaid job most residents take for granted and assume others attend to. The burden is large and the thanks are few. To do this job board members must commit much time and study to make and revisit general plans for the community, and to provide specific services to residents, especially long-term improvement of road and water systems. They must learn and use state laws and district rules and must follow established process until it needs correction.

In an extraordinary period since mid-2008, members have spent an average of 20 hours per week, sometimes more than 40 hours, working for Pueblo West. They have had a crucial meeting of some sort almost every week, most notably with the county to pave roads and to deal with SDS and the taking of district water. Residents can see at board meetings that several complex problems must be solved every week, like what to do if the district's main bank goes down.

Board members are responsible for safeguarding $25 million in reserves and careful spending of that and $6 million annual budget spread over six main departments. they must be responsible for about 75 employees who must be competent and treated fairly, which requires communication working both ways up and down. They must find the best balance between oversight and delegating authority. They are ultimately responsible for mistakes made by past boards, managers and departments, and these continue to emerge.

Board members must solve increasingly complex infrastructure problems without ever enough money. So they must pursue extra sources, starting with asking for a full, fair share of public money from the county, also seeking grants and making fair sales of dwindling public land assets. They must ask state and federal officials for help where justified. They must question all unusual expenditures and all traditional ways of meeting needs and buying equipment and services.

To cope with all this and more, board members need many personal qualifies: patience, curiosity, looking at several sides, judging quality of advice, learning new technical areas, cooperating with a wide variety of people, functioning calmly in public, and discussing individual findings efficiently in public view. They must be able to learn from criticism, know they can't please everyone, be nice to other government entities regardless of political struggles, jump through too many hoops, and know where residents what money spent. When the going gets tough, they must keep cool, handle unjustified criticism, and make wise decisions without enough information or time.

Members must sacrifice some family and personal time and forgo some income. Direct expenses may not be fully covered by the district. They must volunteer to serve on several civic organizations, joint boards and committees, in the day or in the evening. If they are doing their job right, they will worry much about complex community problems before, during and after meetings. Rewards are elusive, but problems affecting 35,000-plus people are slowly solved after years of pursuit.

Besides setting high standards, board members should make everything better than they found it: Rules followed, smoother administration, transparent process, clear budgeting, county respect, dedicated staff, good roads, secure water supply, community appeal and quality of life. Imagine sliding back at this and later elections.

John Mauldin
Pueblo West

Keep tumbleweeds under control

To the editor:

Mow now. Mark Sept. 1 on your calendars to mow again.

Just about all the lush green plants coming up now is Russian thistle. The common name for these weeds is "tumbleweeds."

With the moisture we've had, we're in for a "tumbleweed storm" again unless everybody starts mowing. There are a lot of tumbleweeds growing along fence lines. If there is a privacy fence insure to mow on the other side! A lot of the tumbleweeds are growing along the septic field areas.

Mowing now will keep them reasonable size so that in September you can mow them before they go to seed.

J. O'Niel

Metro district says thanks

To the editor:

I would like to thank all the residents who contacted the Metro District in regards to the earliest Pueblo West pioneer. We found two families who have been here since 1970 the Ogburns and Knuths both arrived around the same time.

I would also like to thank The View for the article to help us find our “Grand Marshall” for the July 4th Parade. Hope to see everyone at the Wet “n” Wild parade and festivities.

Judy Leonard
Metro District

Triark didn't protect COA

To the editor:

One of the grounds used by recall advocates seeking ouster of Pueblo West metro board members in the up-coming recall election was that dissolution of Triark irresponsibly exposes the Committee of Architecture and the metro district to lawsuits. That claim is disputed because Triark was a special-purpose, non-profit corporation with very limited purpose and manned with volunteers.

There is ample evidence that a corporation having no assets, manned with volunteers, with limited purpose, principal of which is the intent to shield its host against lawsuits (COA in this case), risks disfranchisement by a legal principle known as "piercing the corporate veil."

Such a corporation arguably provides no defense against lawsuits.

This argues that any expectation that Triark was a viable defense against lawsuits is wishful thinking, at best. If Triark ever offered the COA and the metro district any protection against lawsuits, that disappeared around 1999 when Lawyer's Title withdrew its membership and parted company with Triark. This had to be known by the recall petitioners who are crying foul against metro board members.

At the June 23 metro board meeting, metro district lawyer Tom Mullans referenced what appears to be a much more effective option. He suggested that Title 24, Governmental Immunity Act, should provide lawsuit protection to the COA and the metro district by providing a deterrent to unlimited liability.

Lawyer Mullans proposed making a review of the particulars of Title 24 that should be applicable to the COA now that the COA is back under the metro districtâs aegis with the dissolution of Triark. He said a review of tort law is also appropriate in this connection (civil wrongs, as opposed to criminal).

So much for accusations that board members targeted by recallers deserve to be ousted from office because they acted irresponsibility when they dissolved Triark.

This proposition has no more merit than the other unsupported claims they made on their recall petition.

But, then, the law governing recall elections gives the recallers an out in saying that the "ground or grounds (for filing a recall petition) shall not be open to review."

And the only caution offered in the recall law is that allegations shall not be "substantially misleading.

" This "substantially misleading" caution leaves an awful lot of leeway when coupled in the first place with the prohibition against any review of the "grounds" for the recall petition.

Don't let false claims sway your vote. In the forthcoming recall election, vote to retain the incumbent board members.

They have in fact acted quite responsibly and they deserve your vote to keep them in office.

Bill Clemens
Pueblo West

No truth to recall charges

To the editor:

It is an unfortunate fact of political life that at least some people will vote to remove someone from office without knowing the facts or bothering to find them out. The recall backers are counting on this and in the present Pueblo West scenario this is more than unfortunate, it could be politically tragic.

After years of serious questionable practices by prior district boards and district staff - from operating in secret to sell district-owned land at discounted prices to a few favored builders and developers and never making public what the final prices were, to ignoring drainage requirements for those same builders, to staff making financial decisions involving millions of dollars without taking it to the board for discussion and action, to making sure, in a number of other ways, the interests of a special few were served over the interests of the greater community, we finally have three board members who were voted in because they promised to change those practices and have actually done so!

But how many people will bother to find out if this is true? How many will just vote to recall because they will figure if someone has gotten this far with a recall effort, there must be some truth in what they are saying..?

There is NO truth in any of the recall allegations. Those of us who care, have bothered to regularly attend district board meetings. We have learned the issues, we have researched what we haven’t understood, we have delved into the history of Pueblo West and seen what favoritism has created. And when a few young men, unconnected to any special interest group, came forward to serve as district board members, we voted for them and continued to attend board meetings to see if what they promised they delivered. Jeff Sloan, Bill Vickers and Steve Abel are in it for no other reason than to make sure the taxpayers’ money is spent in the best way for everyone who lives here, to tackle the problems that a maturing metropolitan district faces and to try to protect the reasons most of us moved here to begin with. None of them could lie if they tried to. They took their jobs seriously and so questioned actions they didn’t understand or that didn’t make sense and as they mastered the learning curve and felt more confident, and questioned actions or proposals that seemed to favor a few, they didn’t back off, or “come around.”

The way Don Saling was let go was probably not the best way it could have been done. It certainly would have been better if he had been placed on probation and it certainly would have been wiser if Stan Hren would have taken another board member with him when he told him there would be a discussion about terminating his contract that night. The increasing mutual frustration between the board and this district manager was visible and palpable for months to us in attendance. But we don’t believe there was any violation of the open meetings law and since that is of major importance to many of us, we would have made it our business to find out if there had been.

If this recall action is successful, we will have taken a huge step backward - back into the “good ole boys” mentality and power that is so prevalent and destructive here in this part of the state. This doesn’t have to happen, but it will require more people getting involved enough to learn the facts and vote on the facts, not rumor or innuendo or outright lies.

Jerry Beers
Pueblo West

Clemens' facts are incorrect

To the editor:

I am writing in response to Mr. Clemens' letters. On June 18, David Jame wrote a letter which was completely factual conerning the structure and operation of the Triark board. I was not president of Triark when he was removed. I did not remove Mr. Clemens, the Triark board did by unanimous decision, which Jeff Sloan was a member.

I am in support of the recall election, however, I am not the driving force behind it. It is a group of concerned citizens who want to create a sense of consistency with the Pueblo West metro board. Yes, I have contributed support to this recall effort. Mr. Clemens in your June 25 letter you stated that, "The recallers have been challenged to prove their accusations in public, at a public form open to the Pueblo West voters. So far there has been no reply from them." The only public forum that I was asked to attend was the hearing held by Pueblo County Clern and Recorder Gilbert Ortiz, at which he found enough evidence to proceed with the recall election. Furthermore, Mr. Clemens, you stated that this election would cost taxpayers $14,000 to $80,000 after you were in attendance at the Pueblo West metro board meeting in which Gilbert Ortiz reported that the estiimated cost of the election would not be much more than $20,000.

On aug. 18, the voters of Pueblo West (not Whitney Graves) will decide the direction of this community.

Whitney Graves
Pueblo West

Recall effort is not about Saling

To the editor:

To clarify - this recall has never been about the rehiring or for that matter the firing of Don Saling. It is about the process they used to fire Don Saling. The obvious prior discussion without public meeting and Don’s removal prior to the meeting where his firing was voted on, without public comment.

We feel the hiring of the new district manager should be the decision of the new board which will be in place after the election - if the job of the district manager is to serve at the pleasure of the board.

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