I was dismayed when I read the letter from Jack Davis espousing how Shirin Elkoshairi’s letter “called out all the misinformation about the La Center mayor and city council being posted on social media.” First of all, the council meetings are taped, Jack, and can be listened to later, so there’s no way to know how many residents get the information. Second of all, the postings have been factual. Where the information was obtained was included at the bottom of each statement. Anyone can request information through the Public Release of Information Act.
The contributors to the statements, posted on “La Center Concerned Citizens” webpage, are residents, averaging 22 years in La Center, and are active in many community nonprofits such as Meals on Wheels, Police Advisory Coalition, Legacy Hospital, Lions Club and Our Days, to name a few. They have a vast amount of experience as elected city officials, business owners, financial managers, vice presidents of large corporations, certified human resource professionals and director of purchasing for a major newspaper, not to mention parents and grandparents of children enrolled in La Center schools and retired folks who care about their city. This group was founded purely to educate citizens who are not aware of what and how decisions are being made by the city administrators. It is up to citizens to draw their own conclusions from the truthful information obtained from city records. If people are upset about the information, then they are upset about what’s really happening here.
There is a misconception about the exit of La Center’s police chief, as well as most of our officers: that they resigned to find better jobs. We’re talking about officers who had set down roots in La Center, especially the chief, and the last thing they wanted was to leave. However, when you’re told that you will only be paid until the end of the year, it doesn’t make for a comfortable work environment.
There’s no question La Center has had a downturn in revenue. We knew this would happen with ilani coming to our junction, but why wasn’t a plan formulated five years ago to try to get more businesses into La Center? And why purchase a building, supposedly to house city offices, especially the police department, and find out before the purchase that it would never be up to code for the police, but purchase it anyway. It hasn’t been inhabitable since 2018.
Jack, you say that you’re sure, contracting out our police needs “will have excellent coverage, perhaps even better than we enjoyed previously and at less cost.” Being a member of the finance commission, I think you should have been more forthright with the actual numbers before the police assessment was contracted and finalized.
It’s my opinion that the mayor and city council have not had the best interests at heart for the city of La Center, and it’s time for some fresh faces and new ideas. We have lost at least 18 tenured employees since 2018. Some of these employees were put on administrative leave and then fired, but then the city had to pay out huge sums of money to satisfy their contracts. All of this information has been acquired from the city.
And lastly, Jack, you say that “the mayor and city council members are our neighbors who want La Center to thrive as do we all.” Why all the invective on social media about them destroying our city? Ask yourself, why on earth would they want to do that? You talk about “common sense” which, to me, is logic, but a very wise city attorney once told me that there is no “logic” or “common sense” in politics.
