After reading your editorial dated Jan. 25, 2023, it leaves me with more questions than you ask.

You talk about the new council members’ actions of reinstating the invocation, firing of the lobbyist and doing away with the sign ordinance as “sidestepping procedure and thorough evaluation.” Did you know that Mayor Dickey unilaterally and by her own admission at the Jan. 3 Town Council meeting – where the issue was thoroughly debated – decided to drop the invocation? Hardly an “inclusive decision.”

Did you know the fired lobbyist happens to be an old friend of the mayors from her lobbying days and was hired for a single project that morphed into an unnecessary full-time position? Hmmm. In addition, this lobbyist recently signed on to trample First Amendment rights for all Fountain Hills residents by speaking in support for SB1025 restricting political speech and signs? Where was the vote giving him direction to take such action? Was this done at the behest of his old friend? There was certainly no discussion or direction from the council on record.

Given the forgoing, the sign ordinance appears to have been a thinly veiled attempt to restrict free speech including political signage (at untold cost to local businesses) and should have never been law in the first the place.

I know your piece was written under the guise of an opinion, but as a journalist you still bear the responsibility to base your opinion in fact. I for one, don’t think it serves the residents of our beautiful town well by sowing ill-founded seeds of distrust unless your agenda is to further the tribalism that unfortunately engulfs this country. But then, that’s what media does. We should be used to this constant drumbeat of misinformation by now.