Guest Editorial
BY STEVE LAMAR | DECEMBER 17, 2014
The holidays, a time to get back to our roots
With the holidays upon us many of us are working through a pledge to ourselves that this is the year we are not going to get caught up in the real and imagined obligations and expectations that confound and dampen the ‘Holiday Spirit’.
For most of us just getting through the work week; dealing with all the ‘personal stuff’ to get out the door in the morning – getting the kids off to school, back home, fed, home-worked, and to bed, responding to this weeks disaster that has us cringing as we call the plumber, or the roofer, or the vet – is a miracle befitting the season.
Then just about this time in December we again find ourselves in a tight jawed race to get the presents bought, the cards to the post office, the house decorated and make the right appearances at the right parties. Throw in dealing with relatives eager to escape snow drifts and reconnect for a week or two and Christmas starts feeling like just more work.
There are many of us who long for the days when the kids, home repair, a not so nice boss and fighting the urge to choke the chatty person in line at the post office were the challenges life had in store for us. But the truth is most of us need only look around to realize we have much to be thankful for. If it isn’t clear at first glance, we should look a little harder. We who are blessed to live in the great Sonoran foothills and exercise our rights as citizens of this great country need not look too far for a reason to be thankful.
The holidays really are a time to look outside ourselves and spread around a little faith, hope and charity. Engage in a few random acts of kindness. Take the time to show the ones you love just how much they mean to you without spending a dollar. Give a little piece of your heart for the holidays and you will not only find the spirit, you will live it and pass it on. If nothing else, it will make you feel better when you choke out the chatty person in line at the post office.
Together, in the last year and eight months, we have been the watch dogs for Cave Creek. We have stood together and voiced our opposition to the Trenk Slate’s unconstitutional mistreatment of a long time town manager; we exposed the outright fraud that was the underpinning of the Trenk Slate dirty politics; we decried the misuse of public funds; we uncovered the conspiracy to insert Trenk operative and friend Rodney Glassman as interim town manager; together we brought Trenk’s election law violations to County Attorney Bill Montgomery who now has his criminal division investigating those crimes; we thwarted the Trenk Slate’s attempt to hire a shady former Pinal County Manager closely associated with unscrupulous developers; we challenged the inappropriate use of executive sessions by the Trenk Slate; we stopped cold the attempted abandonment of our trail system as pay back to a Trenk Slate operative. The list goes on and on.
So together we executed two separate successful recall efforts and have brought the Trenk Slate kicking and screaming to a recall election despite their reliance on Trenk’s admitted election law violations to disenfranchise your signatures.
We have suffered the endless road closers, a calendar clogged with not so special events, flea market tents, shining horses in ditches, and sagging plastic bill boards promoting nothing, lack of flood control and deteriorating roads. We are now poised to return Cave Creek back to its roots. We have a date for a house cleaning of Cave Creek Town Hall in March 2015 because you, at every turn, have responded to the clarion call to be responsible citizens.
It is your determination to put this town back on the right course that has called me to respond as a candidate for Cave Creek Town Council in the March recall election. There are times when we must do what we should rather than what we want. Now is such a time for me.
This town needs our support. I need your support so we can get back to the business of building a better Cave Creek for us all.
