Residents deserve a voice

“If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” -George Orwell

We are all being trained to believe out voice does not matter. Between media censoring people, social media harassing you, and our elected officials disregarding you, we have very little god given rights left.

This was a perfect example in the most recent Saratoga Town Hall meeting. Several people chose to take time away from their family, loved ones, and work to attend the townhall meeting with hopes of addressing their elected officials. While few were allowed into the room even more waited patiently in the hall with hope of speaking.

This meeting was expected to be somber with the recent passing of beloved Counselman Wilcoxen, but you could not tell it this night. Like many I went into the meeting expecting to hear kind words about the Councilman, possibly a prayer, and even a moment of silence. This was not what happened. Instead the only times the Councilman was mentioned was at the beginning with a letter from Councilman Keel, when Mayor Zeiger announced his seat was vacant, when the appointed Councilwoman Welton used his name in vain after a budget failed, and when I asked why we were not allowed to speak. I was advised it was out of respect to Late Councilman Wilcoxen. This gained many groans as people contested the appointed Councilwoman using the deceased as an excuse for not allowing the people to talk.

Other than that, the meeting started off with Councilman Nelson requesting they revise the agenda to allow the people to speak. It was met with almost disdain from Appointed Councilwoman Welton and Mayor Zeiger and failed to get enough votes to allow the people that left their families during dinner time to speak. The rest went as you would figure. Lots of budget talk and when it finally came to the budget, we had all came to speak about the budget failed thanks to Councilman Nelson refusing to second it due to the fact that he believed if the Counsel was not going to allow us to speak on it then he could not vote for it. This clearly infuriated both the Mayor the his appointed friend which was apparent by the Mayor slamming the paper down and Welton making a crude statement to the affect that she wished “Steve was there” as to insinuate that he would have voted to pass a possibly unethical budget to help fund the Rec Director Lisa Burton gain over an additional $31,000 in added pay and benefits. She insinuated that he would have spit on every citizen that was there to contest this budget just as she and the Mayor felt that the people have no voice on how our money is spent.

People in all my years I have never been to a Town Hall meeting where it was so blatantly apparent that your voice, concerns, and even presence could mean any less to those that we voted to speak for us. Well 2 of them we voted for. One was given the position through the good ole boy system that the Mayor pledged to do away with while he ran for the position. Remember she was voted out of office and then when one of the best Councilwomen I have ever had the privilege of knowing stepped down she was given the position against the objection of several people.

To let you know what many of us were there to contest was of course the additional over $31,000 in pay and benefits to be given to a director that the majority of the citizens want replaced and have made it clear for years. This with the additional possible replacement of the $25,000 that was allocated to the little league. Where were we putting this money? Was this money that we were going to take away from the youth of Saratoga going to be used to give more benefits the a friend of the Elected Mayor and his appointed friend? I guess we will never know.

Then to top it all off when I approached them about allowing us to speak the nonelected Councilwoman made it clear that our opinion did not matter. She spoke down to me, the citizens that chose to attend, and made a rude remark about how small business ownership is nothing. She advised that owning a small business is not even work and our opinion does not matter. Maybe she is one of those that are hoping to bring in big business to run out small business. Saratoga WY the new Steamboat. I guess to people like her that may have a ring to it.

People you need to be disgusted with those we have in office. We have one councilman getting grief for fighting to clear a budget that has already misplaced over $1.2 million. Wait I meant to say $1.2 million in fees for handling the water and sewer. We have another Councilman that has told the Rec Board that he is trying to make them quit. We have a Mayor that ... Well he takes up a chair, and a woman that the people of Saratoga voted out and was appointed that is so upset her good ole boy budget did not pass she used a well-respected deceased Councilman’s name in vain.

Please stand up and help your community. It is obvious all our elected officials are not there to do it.

Justline Hale

Saratoga, Wyomoing