What Are We Doing?

You should be ashamed of yourselves (November 17, 2015)

Mayor Pro Tem and council members, my name is Greg Raven, and I’m here tonight to tell you that you should be ashamed of yourselves for even considering seizing Apple Valley Ranchos Water Company via the eminent domain process.

You should be ashamed to have spent tens of thousands of dollars and wasted everyone’s time in the EIR process.

You should be ashamed to vote in favor of an EIR report that considers none of the actual impacts of the actions you will be taking.

You should be ashamed to use this EIR report as a pretext for your actions.

You should be ashamed at the way this EIR report avoids substantive responses to objections by regurgitating vague and meaningless text from the report itself.

You should be ashamed that you open meetings by pledging allegiance to our republic, and then embrace Marxism with actions such as this.

You should be ashamed that you pledge liberty and justice for all, and then deny liberty and justice to Ranchos.

You should be ashamed by the xenophobia you have expressed personally and through your ad campaigns.

You should be ashamed of the way you have treated concerned citizens such as Alvin Rice and Leane Lee, who have tried to alert you to the massive disasters that loom due to your actions.

You should be ashamed to have created an environment of fear in our town that inhibits persons from speaking out against this out of concerns for repercussions for themselves or their businesses.

You should be ashamed to have created an environment of fear among those of your staff who oppose your actions, but dare not speak up.

You should be ashamed for creating division and rancor among the residents of Apple Valley over this issue.

You should be ashamed for allowing your staff to misinform you about the facts.

You should be ashamed for allowing your staff to disseminate lies and half-truths about this issue.

You should be ashamed for allowing the demonization of Ranchos and its employees.

You should be ashamed for pretending the Town and the Town alone has the facts about this issue, especially considering your abysmal ignorance of even the most basic concepts of running a water utility.

You should be ashamed for pretending the Town and the Town alone has the facts about this issue, especially considering your abysmal ignorance of even the most basic concepts of drought surcharges.

You should be ashamed for spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on a P.R. firm at the same time you were telling residents you had yet to reach a decision.

You should be ashamed for allowing your P.R. firm to place ad after ad telling people to get the facts from H2Ours.com, which has literally zero content.

You should be ashamed for not realizing that your H2Ours website has zero content.

You should be ashamed for not considering that no one alerted you to the fact that your H2Ours website has zero content.

You should be ashamed knowing that no one got any information whatsoever, factual or otherwise, from your H2Ours website.

You should be ashamed to be the biggest water hog in town.

You should be ashamed that you curried favor with the other water hogs in town.

You should be ashamed that you failed to participate in getting out the water conservation message.

You should be ashamed that you ignored residents who did what it took to reduce our consumption and avoid state penalties.

You should be ashamed to have paid tens of thousands of dollars in drought surcharges.

You should be ashamed for thinking it is a good idea to put the biggest water hog in town in charge of our water system.

You should be ashamed to urge residents to turn over control of our water to the Town, given the Town’s miserable track record in running water utilities.

You should be ashamed to have assured residents that you had experts on staff who could run a water utility, when those experts have no expertise worthy of the name.

You should be ashamed to have assured residents that you had experts on staff who could run a water utility, when the chief among those experts is retiring next month.

You should be ashamed to have failed to notify residents that your chief expert will not be working for the Town, despite your earlier representations.

You should be ashamed to be considering spending hundreds of millions of dollars buying our water utility, only to turn it over to someone else to run at a profit.

You should be ashamed that you are unable to complete the Yucca Loma Bridge project despite thirty years of planning and effort.

You should be ashamed that you paid top dollar for the Apple Valley Country Club, and have lost hundreds of thousands each year since then.

You should be ashamed that you closed Cramer Family Park because of the golf course purchase.

You should be ashamed to have downgraded the playground area at Civic Center Park because of the golf course purchase.

You should be ashamed to have deleted new tennis courts from the plans for Civic Center Park because of the golf course purchase.

You should be ashamed of your handling of the wells and water rights at the golf course.

You should be ashamed to have given Big Lots a deal that requires the Town to spend hundreds of thousands on infrastructure without getting any kind of monetary commitment from Big Lots.

You should be ashamed that as of September, the Town’s total funds are less than half of the 71 million dollars that were there three years ago.

You should be ashamed that you have to borrow from enterprise funds for the general fund.

You should be ashamed that you think these enterprise fund transfer create a surplus in the general fund.

You should be ashamed about how much good you could have done for our community with the hundreds of thousands of dollars you’ve wasted on this project already, let alone the millions that will be wasted going forward.

You should be ashamed that even given this track record of failure, you are determined to pursue the condemnation of Ranchos.

You should be ashamed that you failed time and again to capitalize on opportunities to buy Ranchos for a reasonable price.

You should be ashamed that these failures now put you in a position where you are considering spending hundreds of millions of dollars to buy something we already have.

You should be ashamed for rushing this through before learning the Montana court’s valuation of Mountain Water Company.

You should be ashamed that you don’t know what you’ll be paying, or what you’ll be buying, or where you are going to get the money, or how much that money is going to cost, or who is going to run the water utility, or how much it’s going to cost to run the water utility, or what planning is needed to run a water utility.

You should be ashamed that you’ve implied that buying Ranchos will hurt The Carlyle Group, Park Water Company, and/or Liberty Utilities, when in fact they will almost certainly get a whopping return on the millions they have invested in our community, and that return will come all at once, thanks to you, instead of being dribbled out over years and years.

You should be ashamed of your statements that residents would be protected by Proposition 218.

You should be ashamed that you have repeatedly failed to observe Proposition 218 restrictions and guidelines.

You should be ashamed that you had to be put on notice of your repeated failures to observe Proposition 218, and you have yet to correct your behavior.

You should be ashamed that you have been sharply critical of water rates, while coveting the cash flow generated by those water rates.

You should be ashamed that your criticism of water rates has not been backed up by any kind of binding pledge to lower rates immediately upon taking possession of Ranchos, and then keeping rates low.

You should be ashamed that your empty promises to try to keep rates low have not been accompanied by binding pledges not to subsidize water delivery through taxes.

You should be ashamed that you imply Town control of the water system will allow for greater growth, when the only current impediment to growth is the Town council and staff.

You should be ashamed that you have implied Town control of the water system will allow for greater growth, without telling us where the water will come from to support the increased demands.

You should be ashamed by your cynical promises of local control, when nothing else you do is controlled in the least bit by the residents, but only by your willfulness and greed.

You should be ashamed to have failed utterly in your meager attempts at transparency.

You should be ashamed that you have stopped trying to be transparent in this matter, for all intents and purposes.

You should be ashamed of your cowardice in declining the Chamber of Commerce invitation to a forum on this issue.

You should be ashamed of limiting citizens to three minutes of comments while you bestow upon yourselves limitless access to the media.

You should be ashamed that you are citing push polls to support your actions, rather than putting this to a vote.

You should be ashamed that you fed false talking points to Pat Orr and Katrina Siverts, and allowed them to publish your falsehoods as facts.

None of these actions was necessary, and none improved our community. You and you alone are responsible for each and every one of them. Shame on you.

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