Woodside agrees to settle ethics code case

One final shakedown for us Woodsiders!

Mr. Burrows and his cronies continue to cost the Town of Woodside not just money but [Part removed. Please don't use Town Square for personal attacks.]

It is distressing that the taxpayers must pay the cost for the town councils poor judgments and lack of ethics. How many more times will the residents have to bail the council out. Where was the town manager and town attorney, to stop this from getting to this point? They should held be responsible for their lack of doing their good diligence to stop this. Will the town residents ever know the real cost of the settlement?

I wonder how many more times taxpayers of Woodside will be expected to cover our council’s poor decisions.

Thank you to Ms. Reyering for her courage to fight the bullies on the town council, not just for her but also for all of us.

Dear “Taxpayer”: I couldn’t agree with you more. Thank you for your comments.

When someone lodges a formal ethics complaint against an official whether staff, elected or appointed the Town Council has an obligation to investigate it.

Perhaps you would prefer they ignore it or bury the complaint?

This all started because an ASRB member made some inappropriate comments that went beyond the scope of her review. She was counseled not to do that. And she did it again. And again.

Further to Old Time Woodsider’s correct rendition of the history, the claim Reyering made that her free speech rights were violated is further proof of her utter lack of understanding of her role in town government. Anyone who becomes a part of government immediately give up their right to free speech *in connection with their role*. The easiest example is the Brown act, which forbids varios kinds of communication among members of government.

Town government could not function without this kind of free speech restriction since it requires discretion about in-process matters that are before the boards and the council. This should be obvious to anyone with common sense. Reyering egregiously violated her duty of care in the way she spoke about council members themselves and about issues before the ASRB, and was caught “talking out of turn” several times. This is all well-documented.

Her use of the free speech argument is preposterous, and really nothing but a successful extortion of the town government.

That being said, the council at that time was not blameless. They knew she was a notoriously destructive member of the ASRB, and (at least briefly) they had the power to remove her from the ASRB, but took no action. They needed to supervise the various boards (ASRB and Planning commision being the worst offenders) to make sure those bodies are behaving. ASRB was a hotbed of citizen abuse at that time.

That being said, getting Reyering out of town government for $60,000+ would have been a bargain at twice the price. It needed to be done. It is unfortunate that it took such a painful process to achieve the required result but the result is that we have a much healthier ASRB.