The Apology
A couple of weeks after sending her email, she spoke at a council meeting during the Call to Audience. She apologized for the earlier email by saying, “Recently I did send an email and it was passionate and I was frustrated and I apologize…thank you for bearing with me and my little tantrum. There was no disrespect, but just frustration and passion.”
Below are the adjectives and other colorful language she used to describe the mayor and vice-mayor in her “little tantrum” email:
“Boldly calculated, disrespectful, outrageous, obvious disregard for human decency, devious collusion, sore losers, self-serving, underhanded, shady, unprofessional, unethical, undignified.”
But “there was no disrespect.”
The Hypocrisy
A few days later, she showed up on LOVE’s Facebook page to complain that, “some of the comments recently posted (on the Facebook page) are generating and supporting slanderous remarks and verbally attacking people by name.” She claimed that they were posting “unfounded information.”
Yes, this from the same woman who sent 18 paragraphs filled with verbal attacks and unfounded information in her email to the council.
She went on to assert that the Green Shirts were not “ill-informed or mean." (Did she not see the dozens of Green Shirts being rude and disrespectful to the mayor during multiple council meetings between July and October?) She described them as a “concerned group of people who are using the right to freely speak and support issues that are important to them.”
Apparently it’s acceptable for the Green Shirts to freely speak with frustration and passion about issues that are important to them, but she’s not comfortable with people with opposing views doing the same.
Another ill-informed Oro Valley Thrives member chimes in
Another person posted this false information on the Next Door site in an effort to get people to sign the recall:
“Only 10% of the Oro Valley residents voted in the last election. Do the math to see why we are in this situation.”
Let’s do the math
Ten percent of the approximately 44,000 population would be 4,400 votes.
Winfield got 9,242 votes. Hiremath got 6,563. That's a total of 15,805 votes which is 36% of the population, not 10%. She’s not even close on the math.
If she's talking about 10% of registered voters, the last I knew, Oro Valley had approximately 27,000 registered voters. Ten percent of that would be 2,700 voters. Again, she’s not even close as 15,805 voters would be about 58% of the registered voters.
But wait, there’s more
Regarding the search for a new police chief, this same person said, “After assembling the advice of an expert panel he put together to determine the validity and costs over an internal or external search to replace Chief Sharp…he (Winfield) alone decided not to follow the recommendation of his panel to select the least expensive and more community oriented internal search within our police department, and instead, to pursue an external search for someone outside of the current police force and community.”
Fact: Mayor Winfield did not make that decision unilaterally. It was decided by a majority vote of the town council in a 4-3 decision during the July 31, 2019 council meeting. She also neglected to mention the advice that was given to the mayor and council that night by HR Director, Chris Brady, an excerpt of which is posted below:
“I absolutely believe that we have good qualified candidates, but my job is to be objective and give you both sides of this for you to make the best decision. I talked to my colleagues across the state. I asked them who’s had a police chief recruitment in the past five years. Help me out, what did you do? There was nobody that was internal only.So, again I ask…is Oro Valley Thrives disseminating false information to their members or are the members making it up as they go along in order to drum up enough signatures to get their unpopular recall on the ballot?
I don’t think you would go wrong either way, but in the past, executive level recruitments, specifically chief recruitments, it was the goal of my previous councils/managers that they wanted to have a process that was transparent, seemed open to the community, and that’s why we did internal/external. The advantage you have there is that you’ll be able to compare internal candidates to other people to make sure that we do have the best of the best.”
Switching Gears
Have you noticed how they’ve changed their reasons for the recall? First it was about keeping all 36 holes of golf. When they got that one, then it was about financing to pay for the upgrades (vs. pay-as-you-go). Then it was about hiring a new police chief from within the OVPD. Apparently, they’ve figured out that their support comes only from those living in the golf communities and even some of them don't support a recall. So they needed to add the last-ditch public safety scare tactic in order to drum up more signatures.
Pleading for Signatures
Some recall petitioners have posted on Next Door that they will be happy to drive to your house to get your signature or you can go to their house or meet in a public place. Soliciting for signatures in this manner indicates that they’re not getting enough people to show up at their recall tables to sign the petitions. Of note is that in 2015, when the group TOOTH (Teed off over tax hike) was collecting signatures to put the golf course purchase to a vote of the citizens, they had no trouble collecting the necessary signatures at the recall table they had set up near the entrance to the library.
Wink-Wink!
I’d like to remind Oro Valley Thrives members who are upset with my Guest Views, that I’m just a concerned citizen who is using my right to freely speak on issues that are important to me. Just think of it as my little tantrum out of frustration and passion. Wink-wink.
…
Diane Peters has lived in Oro Valley since 2003, moving here to escape the humidity of the East Coast. She’s been involved in OV politics and development issues since 2006. In 2014, she organized a citizens group, who over a 9-month period, successfully negotiated a controversial 200-acre development project. In her past life, she worked in medical research at various University Hospitals in New England. Her interests include reading, writing, nature photography, travel, art galleries, museums, and politics.
