Readers of this blog know good and well the many failures of the Pine Forest Stairs at Hillcrest Park, not to mention the $724,000 bridge to nowhere that will soon become reality.
What you probably don’t know about are the shenanigans used by City Hall to influence the City Council vote.
Funding for the bridge, fountain, and “Great Lawn” improvements was approved on a 3-2 vote (Whitaker and Sebourn: No) at the May 16 City Council meeting. A couple weeks earlier, I made a records request for documentation on Hillcrest Park.
Jennifer Fitzgerald’s appointee to the Parks and Recreation Commission, Gretchen Cox, made public comments in support of the project. Having skimmed through the e-mails provided by City Hall the day before, I thought to myself, wait a minute, portions of her comments sounded awfully familiar.
As it turns out, my suspicions were correct. A week prior, Parks & Recreation Director Hugo Curiel had one of his employees, Doug Pickard, e-mail Gretchen Cox a list of “talking points” to assist her in making attacks on Councilmembers Sebourn and Silva:
Portions of the e-mail were in fact used by Gretchen Cox during public comments. Let’s go back and compare the e-mail to what she actually said. This ought to be fun! (more…)