TRANSPARENCY AND INTEGRITY?

Surely Twentynine Deserves Better

The Desert Trumpet is not going to endorse a candidate in the race for District 4 between current mayor Karmolette O’Gilvie and challenger Octavious Scott.

But this sign was just too much for us:

Transparency and integrity?

This from a candidate who:

• Refuses to answer perfectly reasonable questions for publication submitted by a local newsletter (yes, us).¹

• Refuses to appear in a public forum unless questions are submitted in advance.²

• Failed to continue the “Meet the Mayor” sessions started by her predecessor.

• Fails to respond to reasonable email messages.

We expected more from the City Council’s only woman and only Democrat.

If O’Gilvie is elected to serve a second term, we hope she changes her ways and actually demonstrates some of the transparency and integrity her campaign signs now boast of.

The citizens of Twentynine Palms deserve better than this from our elected officials.

1. Desert Trumpet emailed questions to both District 4 candidates with the intention of running the responses simultaneously. Octavious Scott replied, Mayor O’Gilvie did not. Wanting to be sure that Mayor O’Gilvie received the questions, we emailed the Council Secretary who confirmed that she saw the emails. O’Gilvie has yet to respond to Desert Trumpet directly.

2. Desert Trumpet approached Mayor O’Gilvie via email about participating in a public candidate forum. We again cc’d the Council Secretary who informed us that the Mayor was participating in a candidate forum organized by Gary Daigneault of z107.7. We researched the last candidate forum held by Daigneault in 2018, in which O’Gilvie participated. All questions were submitted to the 2018 candidates in advance of the forum and we learned that the 2022 forum would be similar. We then discovered that plans for a forum were cancelled so we again offered to host a public forum. The Council Secretary wrote us confirming “that Mayor O’Gilvie will NOT be participating in your public forum.” The emphasis on “NOT” is the Council Secretary’s.