Email to Hot Springs City Manager David, Over a month ago I pointed out to the City that it has non-working email links to all the board members posted on its website. The ability of the public to communicate concerns directly to elected officials should not be so infringed. Please send me valid email addresses for each director as I have things of mutual interest to discuss, one on one, with them. Yes, I know: I am not a City resident, but I may be if your making my neighborhood annexation target numero uno succeeds. Also, I am a user of your water system, thus having a stake in the Citys plans to bring water from Lake DeGray. While I am not, nor have I ever been, a member or fan of the Tea Party, I do applaud their activism---even if it is at times a tad misguided. However, the enemy of my enemy is my friend, and I will make common cause with the devil to fight a greater devil. That is what I told the Garland County Tea Party yesterday when I spoke to them about annexation. Without ever consulting me or other leaders of the 1998 anti-annexation fight, the City this year has once again studied and designed maps of county territory it covets. No consultation but, worse, no consideration of how such would affect us or the volunteer fire departments. Zero empathy for what we, the county residents, want. In fact, you know what we want: simply to be left alone. The vote in 10 straight annexation elections shows a 70% plus County vote against annexation and an average of 56% City vote against. Such an attitude is elite paternalism at its worst: The City knows better what is good for us than all the County rubes taken together. More precisely, you simply dont care what we want---or what is good for us. You try to shove your covetous agenda down our throats or sneak it behind our backs. Example: the Citys legislative agenda to expand the definition of island for annexation purposes to make the fourth side a navigable stream, thereby enabling the City to grab via the back door (by annexation vote of the Board, the will of the people be damned!) what you cannot accomplish via the front door (the vote of the people). Sneaky, sneaky, sneaky! Shame on you! The same paternalistic elitism seems to be reflected in the Citys Lake DeGray water project. Where have been the opportunities for public comment and input, especially from County water users, prior to authorizing $3.8 million for the project---on top of the $3 million, plus or minus, already flushed down the toilet on the Entergy Park engineering studies which (so I understand) the Arkansas Health Department in advance adamantly said they would never permit? Where is a final, no-wiggle-room, flat-out rejection by the Corps of Engineers prohibiting the City from taking further waters from Lake Ouachita via the existing Blakely Dam intake? Where is the political pressure to change any such (non-existent as far as I know) prohibition? I am a political activist and gadfly unlike any with whom you have ever dealt. When I engage on an issue, I do not disengage. As I told the Tea Party yesterday, like the Southern snapping turtle I do not turn loose until it thunders---and it never thunders in my world! Hot Springs has targeted me, declared war on my property and liberty rights and those of other County residents who want nothing more than to be left alone in peace. I will target you back, and I am relentlessly tenacious and creative in my scorched earth policy. If I am dragged into the City, it will be kicking and screaming (to use ex-Mayor Bob Mathis expression), and there will be some City pet projects going down in flames. Trust me. Or, rather, dont. It is so very devilishly simple to do. Again, please send me operable email addresses for the Board members. Among other matters, I want to ask the Board to renounce the use of forced annexation whether by ad nauseum election land grabs or legislative end-run. You, of course, have a choice to reject my request, but, then, you will leave me no choice, right? Sincerely, Cliff Jackson P.S. Mayor Ruth Carney has a good heart, and she has the right to speak her mind in public and to ask questions about issues. So do firemen and policemen; they do not relinquish free speech rights when they put on their uniforms. Whatever your personal feelings, may I suggest that it would be more prudent for you, as an employee, to show respect for the rights of other public servants? While its up to you, personally I think the firemen and policemen, as well as the Mayor, deserve an apology from you. I give you this unsolicited, friendly advice not as a Tea Party, but as an ACLU, proponent and attorney.
Posted on: Thu, 29 May 2014 22:20:43 +0000