Crance letter: Star recall

As is often the case today, you don’t always hear the whole story on a given scenario/position. Such is the case regarding the Concerned Citizens of Star (CCS) recall effort of Mayor Bell and Councilman Nielson. The Sept. 3 Statesman story regarding the recall effort might lead an uninformed individual to believe that it’s just a personal vendetta by Gary Smith to bring down the mayor and councilman for differences between them in the past, but that’s not the opinion of CCS. While it’s known that Gary Smith has had professional differences with some in the Star administration, the reason he is at the point of the CCS spear in the recall effort is because of his experience and like so many other Star residents, he is concerned that some in the current Star administration are ignoring the will of the people regarding recent rezoning requests and related high density housing projects. Additionally, there are concerns that administration officials may not have followed proper practices/protocols in order to ensure the project requestors received their approvals unfettered. In that light, a few members of CCS have sued the city of Star for a Judicial Review of recent official actions.

This story was originally published September 13, 2017 at 4:00 PM with the headline "Crance letter: Star recall."