It’s the day before the election. The local Republican candidates are making a last minute “FUD” (Fear-Uncertainty-Doubt) attack on the Democrats on the Board. Unfortunately, instead of an honest debate, they’re resorting to making up stories out of whole cloth about what the Commissioners have said and done.
One of the topics they’re misrepresenting is the Board’s current examination of recycling options for the Township. Frank Noyes, 3rd ward, sent out this message today:
Republicans have made it a key point in their campaigns to attack the current Democratic Board’s efforts to improve the township’s recycling program, using misinformation and ignoring the facts.
The latest attack came in candidate Mike Dougherty’s (1st ward) letter to the editor of the Delaware County Times, published just two days before the election. Dougherty’s letter repeats some of the same erroneous claims previously made by my Republican opponent Howard Anmuth (3rd ward) and others: that the Board of Commissioners has already decided to implement a township-wide contract for both recycling and trash collection.
That simply is not true. The Board of Commissioners has stated repeatedly that no decision has been made on which of several recycling plans will be adopted. In fact, Mike Dougherty was present at the October 18 public meeting on recycling when the Board repeatedly stated that no decision on the recycling plan was imminent and more information gathering was needed. Yet, in the November 4 Sunday Times, he wrote that “the idea that the current majority would force such a major change on the township [when 4 out of 7 seats are up for election] stinks.”
Mr. Dougherty knows, from attending the October 18 public meeting, that while a single township-wide combined trash and recycling contract is the cheapest option, there are concerns that such a contractor might provide poor service and be unresponsive to complaints. And he knows that all four democratic Commissioners specifically acknowledged those types of concerns at that meeting.
In the Sunday Times, Dougherty also wrote that the a township-wide trash and recycling contract would hurt condominium owners because they would have to pay for such services even though they have an existing trash contract. Yet at the October 18 meeting, Dougherty heard the Board specifically state that condominium owners would never have to pay for trash collection services they do not receive, and heard several condominium owners say to the Board, “Thank you. You have answered our questions.”
In the Sunday Times, Dougherty criticized the survey sent out to township residents as invalid because only 11% of the township residents responded, but in the next sentence, cited as authoritative the fact that 89% of survey responses said they were satisfied or somewhat satisfied with their current trash hauler. Well, Mr. Dougherty, if the entire survey is not valid, doesn’t that make the response to the one question you highlight invalid, too?
The fact is that the Board is considering all the information it has — the survey results, the e-mails and comments from our public meeting, the research collected by the recycling committee, and information collected about the recycling programs in other municipalities around the county — to develop the best possible recycling plan for Nether Providence. As Board members, we cannot afford to pick and choose what information we decide to hear and what we can ignore.
Given the way Mike Dougherty is misquoting, mis-stating and ignoring facts, I wonder whether he can be trusted to make the right choice on recycling.
Frank Noyes
Commissioner, 3rd Ward
Posted Monday, November 5th, 2007 at 3:15pm
Filed under
Elections,
Nether Providence,
Recycling |
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