My View
By Don Sorchych | November 11, 2009
• Cave Creek election
• Vanik and company
Cave Creek voters have often proved their mettle. Few will forget the overwhelming vote to purchase Spur Cross Ranch using, of all things, the worst of all taxes, a property tax.
Voters stepped up to the plate again on Nov. 3 with 76 percent saying yes to propositions 400 and 401! Never mind the counter pressure from the PRIZE PAC or the whines and lies by the dark side. The large majority of Creekers know truth when they see or hear it as they know BS.
Welcome Walmart!
The dreams and ambitions of CCUSD for an override went down in flames with a vote of 6417 (NO) and 5406 (YES) or 54 percent to 46 percent. With 1,011 votes needed to tie, it was a thorough scrubbing – representative of displeasure with the school board, the superintendent, her sycophants and the PAC members at large.
It appeared the vote would be closer with all the effort expended to pass the override while only Sonoran News looked under the blanket and printed the truth, not the propaganda emanating from CCUSD and their “volunteers.”
But, once again, not only did Cave Creek voters recognize the truth, so did the entire school district.
This was in spite of, or maybe in part because of, CCUSD’s dalliance with the Town of Cave Creek. Volunteer Greg Smith shamed Mayor Vincent Francia by authoring a ridiculous honey-coated piece about CCUSD and sent it to the town. It was in turn sent to the mayor, I presume as a ghost written memo from town hall.
Greg Smith, most probably in concert with Town Manager Usama Abujbarah, was given prime booth space at Taste of Cave Creek. He and a horde of volunteers distributed flyers, signs and had in your face discussions with voters.
It was not appreciated by people at the event and it was improper to use an event of that kind for political purposes.
Signs endorsing the override were everywhere, so many that some are still standing days after the election.
The PAC also had a door to door campaign, which feedback tells us was not popular – more in your face, angry people to twist your arm.
We can be proud of a thinking school district that, unlike surrounding communities, saw through the bogus school claims.
As you read in last week’s Sonoran News, two Kiwanians exercised their rights to public documents by drawing out copies of David Schwan recall petitions.
Recall the Good Old Boys (GOBs) had threatened to call people once they got their names. Not only that, but we have on record that Kiwanis president and council member Susan Vanik tried to get two people to not sign the petition.
Last week Linda Bentley cited a statute which may read on her behavior. ARS § 19-206(A) states: “A person who knowingly induces or compels any other person, either directly or indirectly or by menace of threat that he or she may be injured in his business … to sign or subscribe or to refrain from signing or subscribing, his name to a recall petition or after signing to have his name taken there from is guilty of a class 1 misdemeanor.”
Warning people not to sign because their signatures would be public and they would be harassed was stupid on Vanik’s part. The GOBs and GOGs are the ones who would go after people who signed recall petitions, as she had proved. So did her alter ego, Huber Stevens.
The two people who got recall petitions from Town Hall were Kiwanians Susan Vanik and Ralph Pipp. Of course now that they have copies they can make and distribute as many as they want to. A nationally famous Kiwanis member left the club because of Pipp. Pipp is sneaky nasty while his buddy Gary Hayward is loudly nasty. Pipp was a member of a PAC devoted to the slate of GOBs.
Vanik called a recall signer, just as she claimed “somebody” would. I’m sure that call was not to thank the signer. The fact that she called at all is reason for her to step down as a councilwoman. This arrogant woman may believe her title of Kiwanis President may allow her the privilege of dishonest, and possibly illegal, actions in her town capacity of councilwoman.
It doesn’t. Just watch!
Friends told me she said from the dais at Kiwanis, “You have me to thank for the fact that Don Sorchych is no longer in Kiwanis.”
In that she was correct. I would not be in any organization that gives a presidency to anyone so unqualified and aligned as she is politically.
It is a sad fact that Kiwanis, like the town of Carefree, is ruled by a small band of miscreants; a little dictatorship. The wonderful public minded members of Kiwanis accentuate the positive aspects of the organization and ignore the political propaganda surrounding them.
Tell me what dingbat would try to force the Carefree Council to sign a Dial Corporation “Cultural Contract.” That would be hayseed Vanik, who apparently doesn’t know that such documents total millions in the United States, but with her limited grasp of reality is so unenlightened.
This nonsense apparently derives from the latest GOB push for civility. That is their new tactic, as if they were ever civil. They imply anti-GOBs are uncivil while GOBS are the ones who threaten the peace of the town.
It was Schwan and town staff who violated the constitutional rights of the group intent on recalling an incompetent mayor. It was town staff, governed by Schwan, that also denied sign rights. It was the Vaniks and Stevens of Carefree that threatened citizens. But remember, according to Stevens, “They are only citizens.”
Vanik and Stevens need to be investigated under the statute mentioned above. If they pay the price of unlawful behavior, the Pipps and followers of the Carefree GOBs may need to find a new place to play.
The nation is full of Kiwanis organizations; find one a long way from here.