Morgan Mailer

Unlike her signs, I hope that the beautiful brochure that I just received in the mail today from candidate Lynn Morgan was produced by one of our local businesses. The overly progressive, inaccurate and unrealistic positions taken in Lynn Morgan’s flyer reminds me of why I am running for Supervisor, and why the residents of upcountry deserve a greater choice in their candidates. To be honest, I am biased in my opinion that Ms. Morgan lacks a full understanding of our district and many of its most critical issues.

For example, in her attempt to address the issue of “Water,” Morgan spouts complete nonsense, not realizing that we have different water rights in distinct areas of the County. She begins the entire piece by stating, “Water is on everyone’s mind this year. Fortunately, Amador County has senior water rights on the Mokelumne River, meaning that we get our water before others do.” Ms. Morgan believes that we are lucky not to have a problem because we have “senior” water rights, which may sound good to the environmental advocates at the Foothill Conservancy who are supporting her, but it is untrue for District 3 residents.

The truth is that our District 3 CAWP system, which runs north of Pine Grove past Mace Meadow, has water rights that are in fact junior rights to East Bay Mud. The water rights here in our District that we are campaigning for are totally different than that of Jackson’s pre-1914 Amador System. Contrary to Morgan’s simplistic assessment, our upcountry is impacted by numerous issues regarding water resources. Running out of safe drinking water and not having adequate fire flows would be a disaster. District 3 water rights need to be aggressively protected, and are much more complex than Ms. Morgan would lead us to believe. Anyone who looks at what the State Resources Agency has recently published, would know that we are experiencing less snowpack, dryer and hotter summers, with drought conditions that might continue for some time to come. Plus, we are threatened by the State Water Resources Board’s attempts to diminish water rights altogether in their drought planning. I am also strongly opposed to the State’s most recent attempt to gut and amend the “Wild & Scenic” designation for their own purposes, and to Ms. Morgan and the Foothill Conservancy’s openness to increasing State and Federal involvement in our future ability to draw and store our water.

Ironically, Ms. Morgan’s flyer attacks the Amador Water Agency and our local AWA Director for not doing a “better job” of understanding our needs. It is one thing to continue pandering to what she thinks some of her supporters might like to hear, but to directly insult our District’s AWA Director, Rich Farrington, is once again, simply wrong. As most residents upcountry are aware, Rich Farrington is the first AWA Director to do anything for our upcountry in years. Rich has proven that he cares by working on the Gravity Supply Line and BCDC Grant applications to ensure that we can have safe drinking water and better fire protection, spending a great amount of his time communicating these and other critical issues directly to residents.

Concerning Ms. Morgan’s attempt to please folks about “Roads and Transportation” I would not presume to make the Pine Grove Hwy. 88 widening project the main focus of my District 3 campaign, considering that Pine Grove already has a very capable Supervisor in Louis Boitano. I would defer to respective Supervisors and the residents of each of their districts to determine what is best for their own area, and in return, generate greater respect for upcountry interests.

Ms. Morgan’s unrealistic promise to “build our local economy by creating more family-wage jobs is not only contrary to what is projected for our area by Amador County’s Business Council, but her use of the term “family-wage” jobs implies raising the minimum wage again, something that would actually conflict with job-creation for our struggling local economy. For the past eight years I have been advocating for a more realistic approach to reduce permit fees in order to regain local construction jobs and business vibrancy.

I could go on and on, but upcountry voters are smart enough not to be lured in by fluffy promises. Ms. Morgan’s broad generalizations about the various areas and agencies of our County imply that District 3 interests match up to the needs of the County, which is the same mistake that Supervisor Novelli has made for the past eight years.

Truly yours,

Mike Spence