Here's to the Smear

As promised, here is the flyer/mailer sent out about Matt Maston, and also and Mercury article that seems to be trying to say the same things.

I am so glad I started writing about this area, including and especially Trappe.

More on Monday about the Borough manager and the front page of Friday's Mercury.





Link to article in The Mercury (italicized for emphasis)

Councilman seeking re-election has missed many meetings
Evan Brandt, ebrandt@pottsmerc.com
05/10/2007

TRAPPE -- Incumbent borough Councilman Matt Watson, who is running for re-election, has missed nearly half the Borough Council meetings held in the past 16 months.

Watson, who missed seven of 16 meetings since January 2006, said he has endured five deaths in his family in that period, including his father.

"We’ve had a tough year-and-a-half," Watson said of his family.

Nevertheless, his absences are moot because "in all those instances, there hasn’t been a single time that council hasn’t had a quorum," he said. His absences, Watson said, "have not held up one single thing."

Borough Council President Stewart Strauss, who is running with a group of candidates that does not include Watson, commented, "If you decide to run for office, you ought to be able to attend meetings on a regular basis."

Strauss, said he had nothing personal against Watson. "I think he’s a nice guy." Nonetheless, he said, "we don’t get paid for this, but it’s still a job. If you get elected to the job, you ought to come to work. If you’re going to have so much trouble making meetings, why would you run for the office again?"

Watson said he has been cut out of e-mail communications and notifications from the borough. "The newer people on council all get notifications that I don’t," he said.

"I’m on the outs and I don’t have a hidden agenda," he said.

Watson also said he has been removed from committees and committee chairmanships. Among those positions from which Watson has been removed is chairman of the Joint Public Works Committee, which runs the water system for Trappe and Collegeville.

According to the minutes, Watson missed seven out of 12 meetings in 2004 and another seven out of 12 in 2005, when he was the chairman of the joint committee. Asked about those absences, Watson said, "I would have to look back at the minutes."

Watson maintains he was removed because he at times voted with Collegeville. The committee has three members from Trappe and three from Collegeville and the chairmanship alternates between the two boroughs every year.

In the past few months, a number of issues have been deadlocked by 3-3 votes.

"I voted with Collegeville on an issue or two over those two years and that was it," Watson said.

Watson maintains that when sitting on that committee, representatives from the two boroughs do not represent taxpayers of two boroughs so much as the ratepayers of the entire system.

Strauss disagrees, saying that when Watson was absent, "the vice president, who was from Collegeville, ran the meeting and Collegeville had a majority."


©The Mercury 2007