Curious claim (September 21, 2016)
Apple Valley Mayor Barb Stanton made a curious claim in her most recent letter (Puckett dedicated public servant,
Daily Press, September 20, 2016). I would never,
she wrote, try to publicly destroy [sic] someone and assassinate their [sic] character.
As they say, never
is a very long time. According to the Daily Press, as recently as 2007:
Stanton ignited criticism on April 26 by falsely declaring the president of East West Bank to be a foreigner, accusing the president of Desert Community Bank of lying on her show, and encouraging her listeners to suck your [sic] money out of DCB.Barb Stanton fired from radio show,Daily Press, May 8, 2007
Here we have a personal attack in public, what seems to be tortious interference, and an apparent violation of banking laws.
During the last election cycle, Mayor Stanton labelled one of her opponents a Neo-Nazi, and another a marijuana advocate. (Mayor Stanton is now a marijuana advocate herself, so there seems to be a bit of hypocrisy there.) Others were labelled as unworthy because they did not have her vast experience in office (one term).
At Town Council meetings, Stanton as mayor and as council member has been present when staff member Marc Puckett made disparaging remarks about concerned citizens, and has to my knowledge never uttered so much as a peep of protest against these numerous attempts at public destruction through character assassination. The latest occurrence of this was on September 13 of this year, in a presentation by Mr. Puckett in which he backed up his defamatory verbal comments by repeating the false accusations in a slide show. She herself, by way of comparison, has displayed the good judgment to wait until residents have left the council chambers before mocking them, although she still sporadically gives in to repeating falsehoods about Liberty Utilities.
And it is a good thing Mayor Stanton included the word publicly
in her statement, because according to my sources she secretly has been attempting to get some member of the community to engage in a scurrilous (public!) attack against a concerned citizen who opposes some of the Town’s actions. It will be interesting to see — if she gets anyone to take her up on her offer — how strident she is in condemning the public actions she has been privately promoting. The fact that she persists in this behavior can be seen in her statement, I can only wonder what may be lurking in their backgrounds.
Whether Mayor Stanton and Marc Puckett are the product of a toxic environment at Town Hall, or if the toxic environment at Town Hall is the product of inhabitants such as Mayor Stanton and Marc Puckett, voters of Apple Valley need to clean house this November and get some new blood on the Town Council.
— Greg Raven is Co-Chair of Apple Valley Citizens for Government Accountability, and is concerned about quality of life issues.