Well, folks, Chairman Huebner did return my call, but did not have time to talk. I informed him that I intended to make a statement at today's meeting and that statement is now history and recorded below. As it was during a public comment period, the Supervisors could not discuss or respond. However, I told Chairman Huebner yesterday, that he could call me any time. He indicated that that might not be for several days as he has meetings all week.
Hopefully, we can get this discussion back on sensible ground. The DA happened to be in the audience during the reading of the statement and the citation from the Brown Act. Some sanity needs to prevail here. These are, after all, public servants. Hopefully, we don't have to provide a definition of that for them. Let me know what you think.
Mr Chairman and members of the Board of Supervisors of Sierra County,
Section 54950 of the Brown Act of California states:
“In enacting this chapter, the Legislature finds and declares that the public commissions, boards and councils and the other public agencies in this State exist to aid in the conduct of the people's business. It is the intent of the law that their actions be taken openly and that their deliberations be conducted openly.
The people of this State do not yield their sovereignty to the agencies which serve them. The people, in delegating authority, do not give their public servants the right to decide what is good for the people to know and what is not good for them to know. The people insist on remaining informed so that they may retain control over the instruments they have created.”
In the interest of open dialogue, I called Chairman Huebner yesterday to ask for some clarifications surrounding the Letter to the Editor that he published on April 20, 2007. Unfortunately, Chairman Huebner did not have time to answer any of my questions. In the interest of public debate I will ask these questions today, in the hopes that when Chairman Huebner does have time to speak with me, he may answer them. In addition, it is necessary that these questions be asked in this venue in order that the rest of you may understand our determination and our unwillingness to be bullied.
1) Chairman Huebner, you asserted in your letter that statements made by this “elected perfect spokesperson” were misleading. Please explain what exactly was misleading. The facts, please. And, by the way, none of our statements claimed that I was “elected” or “perfect”.
2) How many people and from what areas of
3) Speaking of serious debate, which is all we have asked for over the past few months, how exactly are we to “trust you to make the right decisions” when you admitted, in this very room at the last meeting where the salary raises were discussed, that you had no recollection voting for 11% raises for the dept. heads last year?
We look forward to hearing the answers to those questions in the interest of actually moving the debate forward. You see, Chairman Huebner, the real issue here is that you have, on several occasions, starting in this room and now in a news vehicle, made an attempt to stifle public opinion and ridicule citizens who hold the sovereignty mentioned in the previous quote from the Brown Act; the same citizens who have an obligation to ensure that the decisions made by this legislative body are correct.
Your statement that the 70+ people. from every corner of our county who have signed our letter, are “a few people from Loyalton, or
I speak regularly with my Supervisor and I will continue to appear before this body in the interest of those who wish to see
