​04/24/13 Preserve Your Right to Petition or Lose It !

Last Tuesday, the City Council released the sample ballot for the May 11th election – not much time to educate the public so this is long but very important.  Starting on Monday, April 29, the Citizens of Brady will go to the ballots for early voting and make decisions for this community that will have the potential to preserve liberty or to give it up.  Below are the four Charter  amendments submitted by petition of citizens.  I will address each one individually in a condensed manner to conserve on space but will explain why they were necessary to preserve our liberty, safety and sovereignty of our homes.  I have emphasized that several of these amendments were submitted by the City Council without recommendation by the Charter Review Committee and it was the Council’s sole discretion to include them.  I will address these proposed amendments and what they mean to “We the People”.  By the way, there has been some confusion as to who We the People really are – that would be you and me and every other citizen of the United States that is to be protected by the Constitution with our inalienable rights of Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.

The People’s Proposition 18 Section 8.01 Right of Recall: “The people of the City reserve (a) the power to recall the Mayor or any other Member of the City Council and (b) the sole authority to determine if the reasons cited on the recall petition are valid.”  This amendment was necessary when the City Council attempted to obstruct our 1st amendment rights to petition our government for redress of grievances by denying our recall petition.  It was only when the court ruled in favor of the Writ of Mandamus that our right to petition was preserved.  The “Right to Petition” is the one power reserved to the people to give them some means of changing the course that government officials have dictated.  The People’s Proposition 18 was necessary to counter the City Council’s Proposition 17:  Shall the City Charter be amended to define each ground for recall of a member of the City Council?  Sounds innocent enough until you read the extended version that would go into the Charter to provide for “legal definitions”.  Basically for Misconduct, they want psychiatric evaluation, for Non-compliance and Malfeasance, they want civil or criminal actions to have taken place.  Now what would be needed to evaluate for a psyche evaluation or civil or criminal action?  That would be lawyers and courts and we know what that means when you fight City Hall – they have unlimited legal, and media resources and we the people have to fund our defense out of our pockets.  Just a 14 day restraining order costs us over $5,500 in legal fees by itself – I have no idea how much it cost the individuals who filed the Writ of Mandamus to defend YOUR RIGHTS.   Now to top it off, my favorite discovery was during the meeting when the acting City Attorney, Monte Akers informed us why the recall petition was denied because he deemed our 8 pages of grievances as not meeting the “legal definition” of misconduct, etc.  I spoke with him stating that it was an indisputable fact that on January 14, the Mayor told the Charter Review Committee that if they could not follow her instructions they could resign or submit their resignation and then she denied having said it on January 28.  His statement to me was, “It’s not against the law to lie”.  So there you have it Brady, approve Proposition 17 and you will forever lose the ability to recall any City Council member for basically any reason and certainly can’t recall them for “just lying” cause you remember “lying is not illegal”.  The very fact that the City would have worded the ballot proposition so innocently is self incriminating to the onerous or “sneaky” definitions they would like to put in our Charter to provide for “legal definitions”.

The People’s Proposition 24 - Section 8.08 Recall Election to be Called:  “If the accused official does not resign, the Council shall order an election within 45 days of the petition signatures being certified”.  What people do not realize about a recall election is that the current wording in the Charter states an election is to occur on the state uniform dates of May or November.  But in order to have an item on a ballot for the May election, the petition blanks, gathering of signatures, certification of the signatures and submission to the City Council must take place before March 1st  or by August for the November ballot.  So at the earliest, it takes 3 ½ months to remove an elected official from office and if you miss that cycle, you’re out 10 months before they can be removed.  A lot can take place in 3 ½ or 10 months.

The People’s Proposition 26 - Section 9.04 Determination of Sufficiency:  The City Secretary shall complete a certification where “petition for recall shall be based solely on the timeliness of the petition submission(s) and the required number of certified signatures”.  Proposition 26 was necessary to counter the City Council’s Proproposition 25:  “determining the sufficiency of a petition for recall of a council member that the City Secretary shall, with assistance from the City Attorney, certify whether the reasons stated for recall meet the legal definitions for recall?”  Remember City Council’s Proposition 17’s for legal definitions and with Proposition 25, where the evaluation of the grievances would be subject to an attorney’s opinion given to the City Secretary to make that evaluation, these two propositions will virtually strip the Right of Recall from the Brady City Charter.

The People’s Proposition 27 - Section 12.21 – Utility Customer Rights:  “The utility customers of the City of Brady have the right to decline installation and the right to request removal of any product and/or service of the City which the customer deems harmful to their person, property or privacy”, citizens shall be notified by mail of their options at no charge or surcharges for their decisions and “ The City of Brady is civilly liable to the customer for personal injury, property damage or death during the time the customer was subjected to product and/or service use.”  Since April 9, my son Coleman and I have spent 2 days in Austin testifying before Senate Business and Commerce and the Public Utility Commission Hearings regarding the Opt Out options.  Over 7 hours of testimonies from PhD’s, industry privacy experts, physicians, lawyers all with scientific reports backing the evidence that these frequencies cause harm to our environment for plants, animals and humans.  These devices are not just meters, they are Smart controllers that can be programmed remotely and are designed to capture data from new “Smart appliances” that transmit usage data via WIFI type transmissions to basically radiate everyone and everything in your home. This technology provides for unwarranted surveillance of your personal activities.  The most heart wrenching were the testimonies of the people whose health and lives have been devastated by these devices where symptoms include insomnia, migraines, nose bleeds, heart palpitations etc.  Then you hear how the Pineal gland that detects darkness to produce and release Melatonin cannot tell the difference between light frequencies and the 900 megahertz devices like Smart Meters, cordless home phones, baby monitors and WIFI so that Melatonin is not properly produced or released.  Put that with the fact that breast cancer women have 1/10th the amount of Melatonin and men with prostate cancer or children with Autism have 50% of the Melatonin they should have. Shouldn’t we all be concerned?

Now how much “fair and balanced” information has the City of Brady provided for you regarding the potential for Smart Meter health hazards?  Absolutely NONE.  But worse, Mayor Lohn obstructed my numerous attempts to have dialog with my elected officials and she and the Council refused to answer any questions during our December 6 petitioned Public Hearing.   The December 11th “Town Hall” meeting that I requested to have equal time with the Sales Reps to bring the health issues to the Citizens of Brady was completely taken over by the City as a Pro-Smart Meter event.  Dale Brown asked me to submit questions for the meeting.   I submitted 22 technical questions for Sensus and the City and I was only allowed 3 at the meeting.  I have never received answers to those questions.  One of which was a map of radiation exposure from the 9000 meters emitting 2 watts of energy per meter to the collector sites on the water towers.  That’s just 18,000 watts of energy emitting in our community, are you OK with that?  How could you even have an opinion  one way or another when this City Council has blocked your access to information.

The City Council’s Proposition 19: “petition for recall be signed by at least twenty (20%) of the qualified voters of the City”.  Sounds innocent enough until you look and you find that Mayor Lohn received 380 signatures to be Mayor and if this amendment passes it would require 651 signature for a petition to put a recall option on a ballot.  Currently it requires a minimum of 250 signatures which equates to 34% of the people who voted at the last election!  Under the ballot section Recall election, you will be given an opportunity to have new leadership for Brady by voting FOR Mayor Lohn’s recall.

Voter guides and more information on the hazards of Smart Meter technologies are available at 1413 S. Bridge.

Sincerely,
Sheila Hemphill​