RUSS notice too late

January 16, 2012

Richmond, Iowa

To the Editor:

Something happened recently which I find deeply disturbing. A tiny notice appeared in The Washington Evening Journal on Thursday, Dec. 29, which announced that RUSS was holding a meeting of The Regional Utility Service Systems emergency board at the Washington County Courthouse on the following morning, Friday, Dec. 30, at 11:45 a.m. It said, ?Agenda items include discussion and consideration of ongoing litigation, and public comments that will be strictly limited to five minutes.?

What I find disturbing about this is that people living out in the country, or in Richmond, received the paper with the notice after the meeting was over. There are people in Richmond who would have been able to adjust their schedules to attend and who would like to have heard what RUSS had to say in reply to our litigation, but they were effectively denied the opportunity.

This seems typical of the way RUSS and the majority of our county supervisors have given ?notice? in such a way that when the event happens, people are taken by surprise. By not giving proper notice, RUSS has held what amounts to an illegal ?secret? meeting, from which the public has been excluded.

Some Richmond residents might also have used their ?strictly limited? five minutes to make a comment, even though our experience teaches us that we are never listened to anyway. That is why this ongoing litigation became necessary in the first place.

This is just another of a long list of reasons why Richmond residents would never choose to associate with an outfit like RUSS, and want nothing to do with it. It also explains why RUSS has resorted to illegal threats, which is the subject of one lawsuit, and the unjustified condemnation of people?s and a church?s land, which is the subject of the other. Since nobody would voluntarily do business with RUSS, it continues to exist only by the use of intimidation and force.

Sandy Berg