Above, the same picture ran in two stories with different captions. The caption above has "Dozens" while the same picture below states "approximately a hundred residents".
At the 8-3-2010 City Council meeting I made a quick mention of the smear job that the Hesperia Star and Daily Press had done on the City of Hesperia with their stories and their lack of being anywhere near the truth. I started out with the golf course turn around, from the City telling them over and over that we will wait for the public hearing next summer to determine what will become of the golf course. The City tells them ,"There will be a yearlong feasibility study, wrapping up by the summer of 2011, to determine the future of the golf course." They turn it into "When the city completed the purchase of the course in May, officials said the decision to make the deal had two key purposes: to ensure the former PGA course had a future and to obtain the water rights." Wrong! After 3 different stories had the City manager stating that it won't be determined what the golf course will become, the Hesperia star makes up its own story and says that the goal of the city was to ensure that the former PGA course had a future. What? Who are the "officials" that said that? Oh well,no will notice that the Star is creating its own news.
On to the latest smear job, on the difference between getting a city council ballot measure on the ballot,vs the Hesperia Star stories inferring that the City Council wants to raise your taxs. Putting outright lies as the headline is not excused or allowable by putting some half-truths sprinkled somewhere else in the story. The lie is what people remeber.The first story started right away to lead the readers in the wrong direction. The headline read-
"Public to have their say on proposed sales tax Tuesday. Public hearing on proposed tax hike at Tuesday's city council meeting"
Wrong, the public hearing was on a ballot measure, not on a proposed sale tax hike.They are 2 totally different things.
To make it clear, City Council's do not have the ability to raise taxs. What a City Council can do is let the people in their community decide by the peoples vote on a proposed tax.This is accomplished by a city council ballot measure. And if the voters in Hesperia said no then the next council would act accordingly. The headline is misleading because the proposed sales tax was not the issue, the issue was if the public would get to vote on it in November.The public hearing was if the voters of Hesperia would get to determine their future by their vote. To continue the smear the next story had a picture to show the angry mob.
The story read,
Public to council: No sales tax hike
Half-cent sales tax would fund fire, police, roads
The largest crowd at a Hesperia City Council meeting in recent memory showed up Tuesday with a single message: “Don’t hike the sales tax.”
Approximately 100 residents attended the city council meeting. It was their first chance to speak directly to the city council about a proposed half-cent hike to the city’s current 8.75 percent sales tax.
Again, the Hesperia Star doesn't let facts get in the way of a good smear job. The hearing was not about a sales tax hike, it was about a ballot measure. Counting heads in crowd is apparently difficult for the Star as they go from "dozens" to "approximately one hundred residents" using the same picture in 2 different stories. But knowing what they are thinking is apparently easy for Star newspaper reporters.The largest crowd in recent memory? Really? Who's memory? How recent? And the Star for a fact knows that the "largest crowd" had a "single message",and it was "Don't hike the sales tax." Some amazing imaginative reporting going on here, unfortunately none of it was anywhere near what happened or factual. No one knows what the small crowd was there for.And there were as many staffers in the chambers as residents.
To finnish with a 100% completely wrong record, the final headline states, "Proposed sales tax hike dies" when what happened was the peoples right to vote on a ballot measure was defeated by a 2 vote minority. The future for Hesperia residents is going to be a lot harder than it needed to be thanks to the Hesperia Star and the Daily Press running this smear campaign. I hold them responsible for the hardships that the people of Hesperia will suffer, due to this reckless and intentional twisting of the facts. Or just making up stuff as we see in their poll that was printed on Sunday.
The proposed ballot measure would have lowered the sales tax by 1/2 of a cent on July 1,2011 as the Anthony Adams 1 cent sales tax increase expired. The poll, if anywhere near reality should have read, Do you support lowering sales tax in Hesperia from 8.75 to 8.25? As these are the real numbers were what were being proposed. But when your the Hesperia Star or Daily Press you can't let facts or actual numbers get in the way of your smear campaign. I wonder what the results would have been if the Daily Press would have checked for the honest figures? It doesn't matter now, that Smith and Leonard have decided that the public won't get to decide the issue. They have decided it for you, and you get to live with the results. Be sure to register to vote and vote this November, and thanks to Leonard and Smith you won't get to vote on the revenue measure. But you will get to vote on who is on the City Council.
