Comments on: Dear Editor: Response to SFD Candidate Slate (Erick, Blauert, Demme)

By: Alarmed and tired of lies

Alarmed and tired of lies — Fri, 22 Oct 2010 00:03:13 +0000

I have been closely following the politics at our fire department ever since the issue of privatizing the ambulance case brought up by Charles Christensen. Let me say for starters that I have a soft spot for the firefighters in my community because they allowed me to spend 5 more years with my wife. One of the firemen even stopped at the hospital the next day after my wife was hospitalized and checked up on her. These men recognized that she was having a stroke and provided her with the best care possible. I say this not because I am a professional in this arena, but because the neurologist who treated my wife credited their performance with saving her life. The person in charge of the crews that day gave me his card and I have called him whenever I want to know the truth about an issue regarding the district. So, when I began to see the rhetoric and accusations surrounding the fire district elections I called on him once again. Since he said he was fearful of what some of the candidates would do if they got elected he asked me not to use his name. So, I will call him Tom. I asked Tom one simple question, why do you care who gets elected? After a pause he told me that he cared about the election because he really wanted to continue to work in Sedona but he couldn’t work in an environment that lacked integrity. When I asked him why, he explained that when Blauert, Erick, and Demme talk about running the fire department like a business and when they degrade our leaders and the firefighters it is apparent that they have no respect for them or the work they do. Businesses exist to make money, we exist to help people and a cutthroat business model where ethics are applied situationally just doesn’t work when the outcome of failure is so lasting. If, for example we reduce our staffing and we fail to get to a call quickly because we are out of ambulances then someone suffers and perhaps someone dies. Or, if they create an environment so toxic that people choose to leave and the best young firefighters refuse to apply here we begin to decline. It won’t be right away, but everyplace where there are hiring freezes now will hire again in the future and when they do people will leave. Then, in a matter of a few years we are no longer exceptional, we are just average. I don’t want to work in a place that is just average.

This message struck a chord with me. I know I didn’t want my wife to get just average care, I wanted her to get the best possible care. The person who wrote the article above seems to marginalize the value of working together. When the cost of failure is measured in human lives the ability to work together seems awfully important to me.

By: Will

Will — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 23:54:52 +0000

Recently I had the opportunity to read the articles regarding the candidates for the Sedona Fire Board. I also went online and listened to the question and answer session that was held at the Democrats of the Red Rocks. I also listened, in person, to some of the candidates at a recent tea party meeting. Listening to each of them speak about their positions it became clear to me that every candidate claims to be about increased fiscal responsibility. The difference I saw was in the way that the candidates approached the message. Blauert, Erick, and Demme all appeared to be on a witch hunt. They seemed bent on punishing the firefighters. As someone who operated on the national level in a very political field of business I am familiar with the tactics organizations and individuals take to derail projects that don’t fit with their agenda. I see examples of all four of the most common methods used to attack any idea when I look at these three candidates.

Delay – After reading the notes of the fire board minutes I saw how the solar project proposed by administration was derailed. Supporters of the project claim it would have made 1.7 million dollars for the district. Mr. Demme opposed the project and said solar would be obsolete in a few months and we just needed time and there would be emerging technology. He went as far to say that the equipment would be obsolete and would need to be replaced. He offered no explanation, just argued against the project and was successful in delaying it until the rebates had expired. This is at the same time that Luke Air Force Base just approved the installation of a similar project, but on a much greater scale. The project at Luke will provide all the energy needs for the base, which will be the first time any military installation has accomplished this. Sounds like our fire department was on the right track.

Confusion – people attack good ideas with confusion and irrelevant facts in an attempt to make the conversation so difficult to follow that people become unsure of what really needs to be done. Once again I turn to Mr. Demme for an example of this behavior. Although it appears he has been provided with access to annual audits of the fire department’s finances he continues to claim an audit must be performed. Arizona Statues require an audit of special district and it seems the Business Director has explained this numerous times. But, Demme and now Erick continue to call for an audit and naming companies that should perform the audits, even though none of the companies they named provide audits for government entities such as the fire department.

Character Assassination – When addressing the issues and the facts doesn’t prove effective people who lack integrity often attack the messenger. Discredit the messenger and you discredit the message. I have seen this approach taken by all three of these candidates. They attack the firefighters and attempt to gain support for their attack by referring to them as “the union”. They attack management and then attack them even more when they stand up for themselves and their position. What rings hollow with all their attacks is that it appears they are not just after the union, but the organization as a whole and I find this most troubling. After all, how can a group that is willing to do or say anything to get elected work together to ensure the service we depend on continues to exist, and at a high level. Having served in the military in combat I cannot imagine how, members of a profession where failures in leadership can mean lost lives would be able to operate effectively with a governing board that spent so much time discrediting them.
Fear – This is a great way for politicians to get uninformed voters to support their position. All you need to do is ensure people fear whatever the other side is going to do and how it will affect you. Take Blauert’s statement about unions leading to the downfall of our nation or Demme’s comments regarding the solar becoming obsolete and all that money being wasted. Or that the other candidates won’t work for you, they will work for “the union”. Every one of these statements is meant to create fear in the voters. Never mind that Arizona is a right to work state and “union” power is severely limited, never mind that the solar project had a written guarantee on performance from the company overseeing the work. None of that matters if you can scare uninformed voters and they vote with emotion instead of logic. Anxiety is a powerful emotion and it is an easy button to push. I received a flier in the mail for these candidates and on the back side it talked about “union pickets confronting voters at the poles”. Once again, that sounds pretty scary. But, having seen our firefighters at the poles in the last couple elections I never felt fearful at all. Of course, if you are going to mail in your ballot and you believe what they have written then they get a vote because they made you afraid.

I was hopeful that at the local level this sort of behavior wouldn’t exist. After all, I expect that if I am out of town and my wife calls 911 that she will get excellent service. I want the same to be true after November 2nd. Creating an adversarial relationship is an ineffective means of governance. It doesn’t work at any level of government. I appreciate reasonable answers to issues that recognize the complexity of a problem and the need to work together to find a solution. What I see in Erick, Demme, and Blauert is a desire to dismantle our fire department and demonstrate their authority regardless of the long term consequences. For these reasons I will be voting for the slate of Fischel, Fitzpatrick, and Montgomery. Their experience and approach seems more consistent with a balanced view of the situation they face.

By: Andy

Andy — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 23:50:35 +0000

After seeing the cards mailed to the members of the Sedona Fire District by Blauert, Demme, and Erick and reading the article in the RRN I began to wonder what heavy handed tactics the firefighters must have employed at the last election and how exactly they had destroyed our country. So, I took what I viewed as the next logical step and that was to go to the fire station closest to my house and find out for myself if these people were really the thugs the postcard made them out to be. I left the station a half hour later with a much different opinion of “the union”. I learned that almost all of the firefighters were members of the International Association of Fire Firefighters Local 3690 and almost every vehicle in the parking lot had a red Maltese Cross sticker on the back window of their vehicle. There was a strong sense of pride among the group when they talked about the first day they joined the union. The talk centered around what it meant to be a professional firefighter and part of what they referred to as “the brotherhood”. Our job is to help people when they are having a bad day one firefighter said and we take our job very serious. One man explained how his wife had broken down on I-17 and a firefighter from Phoenix stopped to help her and at first she was scared but when she saw the Maltese cross on his license plate she knew it was a brother of her husband and she would be safe. The rest of the talk centered around the community they served and how they were shocked and in disbelief that the community had come to hate them so much. They talked about the love of their job, the lives they had saved and the people they had helped. They expressed concern that the fire department they took pride in serving would dissolve around them. Some had served in the military prior to joining the fire department and when I explained I was a Veteran as well they thanked me for my service. Although it was explained to me that talking about politics on duty was strictly forbidden I could tell they were disturbed about the way they had been portrayed. As one firefighter put it, if I believed what has been written about us I would be afraid to call 911. I shook their hands and thanked them for serving our community and found myself trying to make them feel better by telling them it was just politics. “Maybe to them”, one of the firemen said, “but to us it is who we are and we really try to do our best every day.” Maybe more people should visit their fire station and decide for themselves how bad they really are.

By: Phil

Phil — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 23:48:49 +0000

I guess that is one way to spin the message that the candidates are sending. When we talk about fiscal responsibility and the actions of Joe Demme let’s not forget that he openly opposed the installation of solar panels on all of the fire stations of Sedona. This project would have guaranteed a return of 1.7 million dollars over the life of the project. This information was clearly articulated in a board meeting and Demme chose to oppose the project and made the outrageous claim that solar would be obsolete and all the equipment would be worthless. Apparently Demme thinks the sun will stop shining or perhaps he wants to make a buck off the project so he is deliberately delaying it and sacrificing an alternative source of income that could help reduce taxes in order to create an opportunity for himself. Is this a stretch? Not hardly, Demme aligned himself with scientists in Russia and exploited their talents to make titanium golf clubs. As reported by Patricia Kranz in an article for Business Week, Demme exaggerated the number of titanium drivers he was providing companies like Taylor-made so much so that the company he was providing product for felt it necessary to correct him in the article. At the same time he was profiting from the project, the average cost of talented soviet manpower was $5,000/year (As reported in Swords into Market Shares by Glenn Schweitzer). With that background in exaggeration and misinformation he argued successfully for losing 1.7 million dollars of non-tax revenue for the district. Is exploiting people to make a buck just business as usual for Demme? Based on complementary articles he has written in the Red Rock news for current board member Charles Christensen he seems to be comfortable aligning himself with people whose moral compass may make it hard to find the parking lot after a board meeting. I am sure Mr. Demme knows about the illegal activity Christensen has engaged in. Obviously violating open meeting laws, harassing employees, and violating a restraining is acceptable behavior for a friend of Demme. Also, both Demme and Erick have publicly supported privatization of the ambulance although they seem to have changed their tune once the saw how unpopular their previous comments were. What’s to say they won’t change back once they have elected and we will pay higher prices when we need to go to the hospital and won’t control the level of service. It seems easy these days for people to claim fiscal responsibility without backing it up in an effort to win votes. I want efficiency, but I don’t want mediocrity. As a conservative I am tired of people trying to sway me with superficial arguments that insult my intelligence. One morning on the web and a review of past meeting minutes from SFD convinced me that Demme advocated against saving the taxpayers money and wants to privatize the ambulance service we depend on. When people say they want to see the fire department run as a business I am reminded about the fact that most businesses are mediocre. Would I like to see SFD run like General Electric in its prime or 3M you bet. Unfortunately Jack Welch isn’t what I see in the candidates claiming to be fiscally responsible and when there is little talent behind the rhetoric I would rather see a board that wants to work with the people who have made serving us their life’s work then a board filled with individuals that seek political positions to promote the agenda of special interests. I understand Demme recently moved here from the Chicago area and it looks like he brought Chicago style politics with him.

By: Tom Longo

Tom Longo — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 20:30:16 +0000

It is very interesting to note that the very same slate that is stressing
transparency, fiscal accountability and suggesting a forensic, procedural
audit for SFD finances has failed to even provide accountability for their
own campaign expenses in their individual financial reports (ID: 2010-066; ID: 2010-085; ID: 2010-065), required by Yavapai County Elections and the State of Arizona.

You can see a lump sum reimbursement of $698.66 to Mr. Blauert under “Supplies”…that’s a LOT of supplies, besides the additional supplies purchased by Mr. Dible and Mrs. Erick. You also notice that he made a loan to himself in the amount of $500.00, even though the allowable amount dictated by the AZ State laws governing elections is only$410.00. http://www.co.yavapai.az.us/WorkArea/showcontent.aspx?id=59232

As you look through all of the other candidates’ reports, nowhere do you see any expenses or in kind contributions for the multitude of signs that have been seen throughout our district. Where is the accountability for that purchase? http://www.co.yavapai.az.us/WorkArea/showcontent.aspx?id=59224
http://www.co.yavapai.az.us/WorkArea/showcontent.aspx?id=59228

Is this the type of “accountability” we can expect from candidates Blauert,Erick and Demme if elected to the Sedona Fire District Governing Board? Do they really mean what they say? Shouldn’t we expect them to live up to their own platform?

By: Doug Davis

Doug Davis — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 04:31:22 +0000

Well, well, well, look who got caught in the act. Hopefully, voters will take this into consideration when voting, since Mr. Johnson is an avid suppoter of the Blauert, Demme, Erick slate. “Tell me who your freinds are and I will tell you who you are” never rang more true!

http://cmd.shutterfly.com/commands/pictures/slideshow?site=sfdcampaignsignstealing&page=sfdcampaignsignstealing/pictures&album=10

By: Mary V

Mary V — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 05:26:00 +0000

As a Republican woman I am appalled that the The Verde Valley Republican Women (VVRW) will hold their regular monthly luncheon meeting on October 20th at Los Abrigados and only three Sedona Fire Board candidates are allowed to participate Dave Blauert, Phyllis Erick, Joe Demme. None of the other candidates running for the Sedona Fire Board were asked to participate, even though two of them, Dick Fishel and Doug Fitzpatrick are registered Republicans.

Rumor has it that the President of the Verde Valley Republican Women, Carol Gandolfo, who books the speakers, backs Phyllis Erick, Dave Blauert , Joe Demme and will not allow anyone else to speak. How can we as registered Republicans allow this to happen in our Party and in our area? Is the VVRW membership so narrow-minded to stand for that? Have they forgotten the basic principles that the Republican Party is supposed to follow? Is this democracy in action?

All I can say is SHAME ON YOU!!

By: Riled up at the lies about SFD

Riled up at the lies about SFD — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 01:53:56 +0000

It seems that the other slate (Demme, et al) uses the phrase “fiscal responsibility” to actually take needed services away from the community. Fishel, et al have been an active, but objective and independent participant at SFD board meetings for the past couple of years. They have based their opinions on the facts, versus fear-based ideology and are not part of any activist group. Part of our community has lived without the same level of fire service than everyone else; the plans to correct that were simply scrapped and the money that had been spent swept away with self-proclaimed righteousness that just saying “no” to their neighbors was the right thing to do. When I have tried to assert that our neighborhood pays the same taxes so should have the same services as everyone else, I am accused of being part of a union or that I have family or friends who work for the SFD. WHAT?! I am simply a very concerned, tax-paying homeowner who wants equal treatment. That’s all. I know no one in the SFD nor have family there. I am, however, appalled at how they have all been treated and spoken of by some of our community and SFD current board members. I am so grateful to our firefighters, especially in light of the lack of support and outright hostility that comes from 3 current board members as well as Demme, et, al in their campaign approach. THEY HAVE NO ANSWER EXCEPT THE WORD NO. SEDONA MUST VOTE FOR FISHEL, FITZPATRICK, and MONTGOMERY – WE MUST TAKE BACK OUR SERVICES FROM THOSE WHO WOULD DIMINISH THEM. FIND OUT YOUR FACTS AND VOTE!

By: Integrity Matters

Integrity Matters — Sun, 17 Oct 2010 20:09:54 +0000

Blatant lies are circulating in the community about Sedona Fire! A recent mailer was just sent out by the other slate that is so full of inaccuracies it would be funny if not for the fact some people will believe it. Be an educated voter, look at all of the material being sent to you and make an independent judgement.

Please get the real facts from Dick Fishel, Doug Fitzpatrick and Ty Montgomery. They have taken the time to do extensive research about all of the various issues facing the District and vow to take appropriate action on them once elected to the Sedona Fire District Governing Board.

By: Mary V

Mary V — Sat, 16 Oct 2010 03:45:08 +0000

Mr. Demme and Mr. Blauert…As per the article in the OTHER paper dated October 13, 2010, I would like to address some things that you both have commented on.

First, Mr. Demme, you said that the backgrounds of you, Mr. Blauert, and Mrs. Erick can benefit the Sedona Fire District’s Governing Board. I believe you said that Mr. Blauert has lived in Sedona for 49 years. How can that help? I know a lot of people who have lived here that long; but would I trust just anyone to serve on the Board? You said that Mrs. Erick works in the medical profession. Well, I guess working as the Surgery Scheduler in an ophthalmologist’s office constitutes working in the medical profession….it’s certainly not in the automotive, insurance, or even educational professions; but I’m still baffled. What can she really bring to the table?

Then there’s you. After attending Loyola University in Illinois for two years, you quit college and began working for a company in the electronics business.
Then you dabbled with purchasing copper and steel in the domestic and foreign markets. Then you purchased commodities for resale to companies needing them for production. Later you lived in Indonesia and worked for an oil company.

Now you say you have an “ international business background.” Can you explain how on earth this can help our outstanding fire district?

You two men have done nothing but brag about yourselves and have not given specific reasons as to why we should vote for you. Mr. Blauert, you have stated several times that “there would be no Posse Ground if it wasn’t for Dave Blauert”. Actually, Posse Ground was in existence well before your involvement. In addition, you mentioned that you were instrumental in getting the first ambulance in 1963. According to historical archives Sedona’s first ambulance(also known as “Big Bertha”) was donated by the Business and Professional Women’s Club (BPW) of Sedona in March 1963. How come you are taking credit for that?

You have also stated that your team will assist on a thorough audit because the audits in the past were “embarrassing.” Can you elaborate, in detail, what solid proof do you have to make that allegation? What makes them embarrassing? What makes you knowledgeable in this arena of finance, and what do you propose? Give us some concrete examples.

Mr. Demme, with all due respect, you’re telling the people of Sedona you don’t want to “slash” and “destroy” the District’s budget. I love your choice of verbs……”slash” and “destroy.” What Joe Q. Public doesn’t realize is that through your hidden agenda, you really mean to do some slashing and destroying to an outstanding fire district with employees who do an exemplary job. You have made some slanderous remarks filled with misinformation that is meant to put doubts in the minds of some of the gullible SFD voters. Have you thought about who will save your life if you go into cardiac arrest, have a stroke, or your house goes on fire???? Yep, it’s these same people who will be there to help you.

Sedona is comprised of people with common sense, who are intelligent and accomplished people. These type of people want facts, figures and proof about all of the false allegations you are making. They also want to have the best fire and EMS services available. I personally feel confident that if I have a need for them, they’re going to come through for me. I’ve seen them in action and am highly impressed by their organization, knowledge, advanced equipment, compassion and thoroughness. You have no right to these services away from those who moved here and need it!

I hope that the SFD taxpayers reading this will seriously consider and vote the slate of Fishel, Fitzpatrick and Montgomery. We have three highly educated and accomplished men who are logical, broad-minded, fair, and very sensible people who will get the job done.