Last Minute Attempts To Confuse Voters on Measure K

  • Pine Mountain resident Roger Bryan.

    Pine Mountain resident Roger Bryan.

Would you bet your life on this hand?

By Katy Penland

A full deck of slick cards has been dealt into Pine Mountain mailboxes by an unknown ‘astroturf’ organization just before election day. They contain confusing misinformation about the firefighter-paramedic Measure K.

Would you bet your life on this hand?

Roger Bryan, Pine Mountain resident, sure wouldn’t.

And he didn’t six years ago when he thought he was having a heart attack.

“We knew there were no services here, and my wife and I decided, ‘why sit and wait for someone to drive in from Frazier Park only to have to drive out again?’

“So we hopped in the car and my wife drove me to Hall Ambulance [in Frazier Park] who ran some tests and determined I was in no imminent danger.

“My wife then drove me into Valencia to Henry Mayo Hospital.” Bryan said that the lack of emergency medical services in Pine Mountain nearly made them move away after that, so they voted for Measure K.

“Why would anyone oppose it?” he asked, amazed at the tone of the flyers in his mailbox.

Photos of Hall Ambulances are prominently featured on the slick cards that cost thousands of dollars to design, print and mail. They carry misleading information. Makes one wonder just who has a financial interest in confusing enough people to make the 2/3 vote for the firefighter-paramedic measure fail?

The jackpot will be enough ‘yes’ votes to win quicker and better emergency medical response in Pine Mountain.

This is part of the October 31, 2008 online edition of The Mountain Enterprise.

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