YES, IT’S POLITICAL

County residents showed up at the Jan. 30 County Commissioner’s meeting to express our outrage at the lengthy wait for a work session we had requested at the Jan. 9 meeting. The work session to discuss the commissioners’ referral of the Freedom from Aerial Herbicide Spray Ban to the November ballot had been scheduled for May 23, after the May primary election — a four-month wait!

Chair Bozievich lost his composure, saying he was likely to pull the work session altogether because, to him, the spray ban proponents were using the primary election as a political ploy.

Of course, it’s political! Don’t 15,000 citizens who signed the petition, demonstrating that aerial spraying of toxic chemicals is an important issue to them, have a right to know where the commissioners stand on this matter before we vote in May?

Commissioner Williams also stated spray ban proponents were making the spray ban political. The spray ban is a health issue, but of course it’s political! Corporate timber interests have invaded our government structures and have legalized protections to the harmful practice of herbicide spraying in our forests, impacting the health, safety and welfare of area residents and the environment.

Yes, of course it’s political.

Michelle Holman, Deadwood