Saturday it rained. We didn’t get too many door-hangers out, and still got soaked. At least we did get some promotional material to the public. I don’t expect to make it past the primary tomorrow, but I am planning for it. There are a lot of surprising people voting for me. A lot of people I haven’t talked to in years have tracked me down to let me know they support my bid for city council. Kinda gives me a warm fuzzy feeling.

I expect that the people with more money for signage and more influence will skate into the general election, but thank you to all who have supported me in any way and DON’T FORGET TO VOTE!!!

UPDATE: Our little little election got covered in The Southern. How cute.

The Mount Vernon Register-News has an article today with some expressed frustration from Mike Walker. I don’t blame him. The council is being hit from all sides by accusations of impropriety and “conspiracy theories” both online and by letters to the editor of the R-N. I don’t blame Mike for being frustrated. I’m frustrated just reading a lot of the half-baked stuff myself.

Most of the “theories” are just based on speculation and a tiny bit of truth. Maybe there is NO truth and only rumors. These are the worst kind of garbage and should be disposed of as such. That should not be difficult to do by just presenting facts. Rumors only have the life that you give them, and needles of truth tend to pop inflated rumors pretty easily.

With all of that said, I have to admit there are a lot of fact-strings tying together a lot of different pieces that give the appearance of impropriety. Perhaps it is just coincidence and a consequence of a small town, but you can only ignore the 800lb gorilla so long.

Mrs. Holt had a nice, inspiring quote as well. I will NOT accuse her of not voting her conscience. She seems to be a good person. I will agree 100% that she voted on an issue knowing of the clear conflict of interest given her employment by the school district. I am not saying she voted how she did due to her employment, but she SHOULD have abstained in my opinion.

“A conflict of interest is a situation in which someone in a position of trust, such as a lawyer, a politician, or an executive or director of a corporation, has competing professional and/or personal interests. Such competing interests can make it difficult to fulfill his or her duties fairly. Even if there is no evidence of improper actions, a conflict of interest can create an appearance of impropriety that can undermine confidence in the ability of that person to act properly.” – Wikipedia

Maybe I’m grouped with the “conspiracy theorists”. Maybe I shouldn’t point out an obvious conflict of interest.

I am quite serious with the title of this post. There are a great many “coincidences” in the design, project managing, city council campaign donations, etc. that would lead one to presume not all is kosher with the school referendum and elections.

The web is pretty rampant with rumors, and I won’t propagate them. Take a look at either of the forums at the end of this post to find the facts that could lead to such questionable conclusions.

I do think we need improvements and rebuilding of our high school, but I also personally believe there is a lot of collusion and/or planning by some to ram this current plan up our tail-pipes.

Donations from busing services, construction companies, and other special interests? Council members failing to abstain from votes that directly affect their employer? Council refusing to ask Mount Vernon residents whether the city should prop-up the school district? No bidding process for anything? Only one architectural design considered? Project manager already hired?

Too many questions to be ignored. I hope that these are all coincidences, but I will be praying that all things come out as they should and that God will grant us the wisdom to discern wheat from chaff.

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