With just over a week until the Aberdeen city elections, some candidates are crying foul over a “mayor?s annual report” that they say reads like a campaign brochure for the incumbents.
The glossy, eight-page brochure lists the city government?s notable accomplishments over the last year, including a balanced budget, an enterprise fund for water and sewer improvements, higher salaries for city employees and preparing the city for Base Realignment and Closure jobs at Aberdeen Proving Ground.
But some of the candidates fighting to unseat the incumbent mayor and council say the report was timed to tout the council?s work while presenting an incomplete picture or using out-of-date information.
“It?s a perfect propaganda piece, talking up things like the police Rapid Response Team or a K-9 unit, naming names that just don?t exist anymore,” said council candidate Rick Denu, a former Aberdeen police officer who said that Army deployments and reassignments have significantly changed the lineup of police praised in the brochure – taking the K-9 officer off the street and reducing the RRT to only two officers, he said.
The information in the report is old enough to have come from July, when the report ostensibly could have been put together at the end of the fiscal year, Denu said.
Denu said he hasn?t received such a report since Mayor Doug Wilson?s administration.
“I didn?t expect anything less, to be honest,” said mayoral candidate Mike Bennett. “People had asked and asked for this report for the past year, and to read it you would think that this is Utopia.”
Mayor S. Fred Simmons, who graces the inside of the report, says “when you have two-year terms, some start running for the next election as soon as they begin the term, and no matter what you do in 24 months it?s going to be seen as political. Anything that?s favorable to me at this point is going to look like a campaign piece.”
