By recent accounts, about 1,000 Fountain Hills residents have volunteered precious time to help make our town the best it can be. Citizens serve on committees, commissions, advisory boards and assist with all kinds of town-related activities.

Yet, it seems our freshmen councilpersons either are unaware of citizen involvement, or plain just don’t care.

Witness the Feb. 21 Town Council discussion about an improved entry to Fountain Park. My concern is not whether the project proceeds, but how decisions are made and how people are being treated.

Despite weak preambles like “no slight to Jerry,” four councilpersons did slight Jerry Butler – and his fellow 11 members of the citizen Streets Committee. Scheduled to present their findings in just six days at the Council’s Strategic Planning retreat, Councilpersons Hannah Toth, Allen Skillicorn, Brenda Kalivianakis and Gerry Friedel hijacked that opportunity, declaring the project terminated right then and there.

“Please give us the courtesy of finishing our assignment as a committee, then later make a decision based on facts,” asked Butler, a Fountain Hills resident for 24 years and a retired engineer with decades of experience planning highways and roads. Seems like a reasonable request.

In their discussion about the project, the lack of knowledge among the new councilpersons was astonishing, yet they were disinterested in learning more. Kalivianakis declared she knew that more people supported terminating than not. I don’t remember being asked. Do you?

Trampling all over the work of dedicated citizens didn’t stop there. At the next Council meeting, the group of four declared a citizen-created, voter-approved Environmental Plan was unacceptable, spouting partisan trigger terms like “virtue signaling,” “Green New Deal” and “becoming California” in order to further their own agenda – not the peoples’ vision.

As a new Commissioner, I ask, “Am I just wasting my time?”