As a 40 year resident of this community, I feel compelled to comment on recent actions taken by Waste Management as a part of their aggressive campaign to turn Simi Valley into a “mega dump” for Los Angles garbage.  I am completely stunned by the false and inconsistent comments made by Waste Management.

At the same time they are promising the community transparency and claiming a willingness to address the impacts of their proposed expansion of the dump on Simi Valley, they are strong-arming our Mayor and City Manager with promises of discussions that never happened and documents that never were created.

Let me point our specifically what I mean.  In Waste Management’s court filing presented to the judge on November 15, 2010, they acknowledge their understanding of the clear separation of my role on the Simi Valley Landfill Expansion Task Force, and my position as a member of the City Council Member.

In their statement of fact they write, and I quote, “The Simi Valley Landfill Task Force is not associated with, or acting on behalf of, the City of Simi Valley.  The Landfill Task Force is an unincorporated community group.  Although Barbra Williamson is both an officer of the Task

Force and a sitting Simi Valley City Council Member, SHE IS NOT ACTING IN HER OFFICIAL CAPACITY AS A COUNCIL MEMBER BY PUIRSUING THIS LAWSUIT” unquote.  On this point I could not agree with them more, but they seem to speak out of both sides of their mouth.

In their own words, Waste Management repeatedly promises our community openness and transparency yet they say one thing in their court filings and another in their press releases and letter to the city.

The day after they told a judge I was NOT acting in  my official capacity as a Council Member,  these same people issue a press release in which they stated, and I quote, “The actions of Council  Member Williamson and her Task Force are confusing” unquote.  Then they send a letter to City Manager Mike Sedell calling off mitigation discussions they had promised to hold with Mayor Paul Miller and the City Manager who were OFFICIALLY appointed by the City Council to meet and come up with a plan that would work for both Waste Management and the residents of Simi Valley.

They claim in their letter to Mr. Sedell that, and I quote, “recent actions taken by one of your city Councilmember’s have created serious obstacles to continue discussions with the city”, unquote.  The recent action they are referring to is the request filed by the Task force for legal clarification regarding the County of Ventura’s processing of the Application for Expansion of the Simi Valley Landfill.

I believe it is clear that any questions regarding my role as a Council Member and my efforts to bring together concerned residents as part of the Simi Valley Landfill Expansion Task Force have been addressed.  I trust my colleagues will agree that Waste Management’s actions are a blatant effort to deflect the real issues facing the community and to avoid having an honest and thorough discussion of the impact this expansion will have on Simi Valley for years and years to come.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Mr. Mayor and fellow Council members, tonight we have an opportunity to stop the sound bites and the he-said she said game playing and give the people of Simi Valley a truly transparent discussion and offer Waste Management the opportunity to maintain their previous relationship with the City of Simi Valley.

To that end Mr. Mayor, I would like at this time to make a motion that we place a discussion of the impacts of the proposed landfill expansion on the next City Council Agenda.

Thank you.

To get you started down that path for those of you who are interested, I located the following notable examples of “Internet sockpuppets” from Wikipedia. Check out these noteworthy incidents:

John Lott, author of More Guns, Less Crime, who, between 2000 and 2003, posted under the “sockpuppet” name of “Mary Rosh”, praising Lott’s teaching, and arguing with Lott’s critics on Usenet. The name was also used to post outstanding reviews of his books, and panning books of rivals on online book sites. Lott admitted he had frequently used the name “Mary Rosh” to defend himself, but claimed the book reviews by “Mary Rosh” were written by his son and wife.

Lee Siegel, writer for The New Republic magazine, was suspended for defending his articles and blog comments using the user name “Sprezzatura”. One such comment, defending Siegel’s bad reviews of Jon Stewart: “Siegel is brave, brilliant and wittier than Stewart will ever be.”

In 2006, a top staffer for then-US Congressman Charlie Bass (R-NH) was caught posing as a “concerned” supporter of Bass’s opponent Democrat Paul Hodes on several liberal New Hampshire blogs, using the pseudonyms “IndieNH” or “IndyNH” “IndyNH” was “concerned” that Democrats might just be wasting their time or money on Hodes, because Bass was “unbeatable”.

In January 2007, the press secretary of San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, Peter Ragone, admitted that he posted pro-Newsom comments to the blog SFist from his computer variously as “John Nelson” (a friend) or as “Byorn.” The San Francisco Chronicle reported that Ragone stated that “he answered Newsom’s critics using others’ names because being online ‘was fun — it’s where people are having fun.’”

In 2007, the CEO of Whole Foods, John Mackey, was discovered to have posted on the Yahoo Finance Message Board, extolling his own company and predicting a dire future for their rival Wild Oats Markets while concealing his own relationship to both companies under the screen name “Rahodeb”.

On January 13, 2009, a councillor from Bournemouth, England Ben Grower was exposed by the Daily Echo newspaper for repeatedly posting comments praising himself, and fellow Labour councillors, on the newspaper’s website using many sockpuppets, one of which was named “Omegaman”. When questioned about the matter Grower was initially ambiguous in his response but later he admitted it was true saying “I have done nothing against the law. And probably next time I will just use a different pseudonym.” The story of Grower’s sockpuppetry was covered widely in the media.

In April 2010 the British historian Orlando Figes was exposed as having written critical reviews of books by professional rivals on the Amazon website under the name ‘historian’.

The amount of time dedicated to these types of efforts is massive. Phony comments on this blog were posted in times ranging from as early as 4:34AM to well beyond midnight. The number of “astroturf” comments was nearly 1000.  Of those, approximately 58% were posted by (…drum roll…) one single tortured soul among many of his fake monikers, spanning months!

The now deleted Booster Club articles were the ultimate demonstration in Internet Sock-puppeteering. What appeared on the first article were angry people seeking immediate action. The follow-up article resulted in even more people angry at me. Nearly 140 comments were posted between the two articles. All 140 comments were posted by less than 10 unique people. Some comments were posted pretending to be misguided supporters of “the other side” saying inappropriate things in feigned support of a candidate in a blatant effort to fan the flames. Shameless. Embarrassing.

Not Jackie

There are approximately 9 people who post under pseudonyms, each with a minimum of two names, some with as many as eight, all of whom throw rocks from behind a wall of anonymity. These 9 people account for nearly 83% of my comments since May. I cannot definitively say I know everyone’s true identities, but the ones I discovered were disappointing. Many of these people have had pleasant and engaging conversations with me, only to cut me down or skewer a candidate behind a pseudonym on this website. Some engage their own pseudonyms in conversations, an unusually schizophrenic behavior that is at first funny upon discovery, but ultimately deceitful. I located one instance of more than 30 comments between 13 unique names but actually posted by the same 3 people.

I will not reveal any true identities. I will say that it needs to stop now. I choose not host an archive of this behavior. If you’re a participant in all this, your instinct may be to challenge this. Please don’t. Don’t post from the Town Center Apple Store. Don’t use proxy services. Don’t bother changing your writing style. It will not work.

I’m not surprised by every discovery, but two in particular really bothered me. In politics, even if you’re not a politician, you have to be careful who you trust. I learned this lesson when I scrubbed my tracking database this week. This is putting it mildly, but I am really let down.

For the rest of you, things will seem pretty quiet around here. I hope that we can enjoy more genuine commentary going forward and that we can restore things to a level of civility.

Of course, there are conditions.  They are:

• You’ll need to register a domain name or the “dot com” name for your website
• You’ll need to be willing to drift outside your comfort zone and learn how to use a content publishing tool (I can help)
• You’ll need to update the website regularly with campaign news, information, announcements, etc.

If you can commit to that, I can help you get online and spread the word about your campaign. Consider it a celebration of technology that happens to work as an advertising channel for your Simi Valley campaign.

Interested? Contact me and I’ll help you get started!

Let’s make this the most informative, most competitive election Simi Valley has ever seen!

Facebook is a terrific free way to promote your campaign online. Most of the City Council candidates are using Facebook to promote their events and send campaign messages to their supporters. Recently, Facebook announced Facebook Places, a neat tool for those with the right mobile device. Not necessarily a campaign tool, but a clear indication of the continued growth and expansion of one of the most popular social networking phenomenons to date.

For those of you involved in local elections who are looking for assistance or guidance, I’d like to once again offer my support. I live and breathe this stuff on a daily basis and would be more than happy to share some techniques or offer guidance, no strings attached. I can’t help it. I love this stuff. It’s a sickness!

If you listened in to the live discussion last night with the challenging City Council Candidates, you heard a lot of criticism of the sitting Council and City Management regarding Farmers leaving the city. However, you may have also heard that none of the candidates had any definitive answers on what to do about it. The truth is that both a newcomer and a seasoned veteran would need to take a step back and consider the best game plan. I can choose to believe what everyone tells me about the Farmers Insurance training center, but unless I’m sitting in front of the Farmers Insurance decision makers, there’s no way to really know why it moved out of Simi Valley and if it truly marked the start of their ultimate exit plan. For all we know, it was a decision based purely on logistics. Either way, it’s done and the focus should be on filling that space.

If this weren’t an election cycle, we’d be looking at our current leadership for a strategy on how to make that happen. We’d be expecting them to represent our interests and interface with city management to entice a new tenant. But it’s election season, so naturally we wonder if new representation is needed.

In a time like this with a situation like this one, people are inclined to take risks. Some may consider the best risk to be voting for someone with new ideas. Others may consider the best risk to be voting for someone with experience in City Hall. But no matter what, I don’t think that now is the time to make that decision. We don’t know enough and we haven’t heard from everyone. Put those emotions on hold and wait for the discussion to continue.

And this may seem off topic, but it’s important to me to say…

Barbra Williamson is one of the boldest people on the City Council. It takes guts to put yourself out there like she does. You may not agree with her but you cannot argue that she isn’t honest. Before you get upset, I’m not talking about her positions, her policies or her opinions — I’m talking about her willingness to post on these blogs and engage the people on their turf. It’s hard, thankless work that’s got to sting at times. Barbra, thank you. Not everyone realizes it, but you are a very good listener even if you throw in an argument or two, and it means a great deal to me.

Moving on…

I plan to coordinate a chat with the incumbents to address many of the same issue we covered last night and to give them an opportunity to respond. I think you’ll see we have thoughtful people on both sides here. I’ll follow-up here when I’ve got more details.

What a great evening with the challenging City Council Candidates. Each candidate had plenty to share on topics such as doing business in Simi Valley, the Shop Simi Valley First program, City Council salary and benefits and more. I’m pleased to present the recorded playback of our live chat.

For more information about the candidates, see the following links:

• Keith Mashburn
• Ken Sandberg
• Mike Judge
• Mitch Green (no public website or Facebook page yet – look-up Mitchell Green on Facebook)

In our 90 minutes of time, we did NOT cover all the topics I was hoping to touch on. Hopefully these candidates will return to cover some additional topics before the election.

My sincere thanks to the participants and for those of you who listened in. More to come, I hope!

Listen Now!
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Ted Mackel, local technology guru, shows us all how in his latest how-to video. Check it out and consider giving it a try:

The comments need to be turned around. I’m comfortable with the remarks tossed in my direction, but when people I consider to be community leaders and personal friends prefer to stay away instead of join the conversation, then this becomes pointless for me.

Pseudonyms make us say what we ordinarily wouldn’t in public. That’s fine if what you have to say is really moving or particularly relevant. But if it’s just a personal shot at someone else, then I don’t want it here. Consider that before you hit the Submit Comment button.

I’ve banned a few commentators today in the hopes of restoring order. Please try to be respectful of this website’s “main thing” as well as the requests of our candidates to show support while keeping it civil. You can read their positions on negative comments by clicking the hyperlinks that appear right above the box where you submit your comments.

Thank you.

City Councilmembers acknowledged that the city employees are making sacrafices and are grateful for that in these rough economical times. Councilman Steve Sojka was quoted in the Simi Valley Acorn acknowledging that city employees are effectively taking a cut in an effort to help the city keep its head above water during hard times.  The Acorn article elaborates on the deal:

That help included the SEIU’s making significant concessions concerning employee retirement plans. Under the terms of the new agreement, current employees will contribute 3.97 percent and all new employees—hired on or after July 1, 2010—will contribute 7 percent of salary to the California Public Employee Retirement System (CalPERS).

The change is expected to save the city $1.65 million.

It’s probably a sure bet that the city employees aren’t necessarily happy with the deal or walking away from negotiations with a warm fuzzy feeling. Nobody wants to make sacrifices in either the form of reduced pay, reduced benefits, or suddenly having to contribute more to a benefits program when not having to worry about that in the past. Speaking personally, I can say with sincerity that I am VERY grateful for the sacrifices made by our city employees. Thank you!

But the negotiations aren’t over yet. Simi Valley Police were asked to make pay cuts last year and did so after a lengthy and dramatic negotiation process, where the Police Officers Association (POA) considered hiring a Public Relations firm to spread the word about the issue. Once the terms were settled, the POA was clearly unhappy with the resulting cut in salaries and shortly after announced the formation of their Political Action Committee (PAC). The PAC is funded by an increase in POA union dues.

Despite the fact that other city employees were asked to take cuts in pay, a strong belief remains that the pay cut applied to Police Officers in Simi Valley was unfair. With more contract negotiations looming, anticipation is certainly beginning to build. City Council Candidate Mike Judge has something to say about it to his supporters, suggesting that “pro law enforcement” sentiments by our current City Council are disingenuous (see his remarks below on his campaign page on Facebook).

Our City Leadership scored some points with the negotiations with city employees, but it’s obvious there’s more challenging work ahead.

City Council Candidate Mike Judge on Facebook