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During the recent city council meeting on December 17th, there was a notable
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“Ain’t that the truth” |
incident involving council member Holly Tillman, who expressed her concerns in a rather aggressive manner. She alleged that Clayton Watch, a political action committee, was improperly using her personal email address to reach out to her and threatened them by saying this was illegal.
This assertion is far from accurate. Allow me to clarify. On December 13th, Clayton Watch received an email from Tamara Steiner of the Clayton Pioneer, in which she acknowledged that Peggy Spears, one of her writers, had made a significant error by misquoting the vote count from our previous city council election.
In the same email she asked the Clayton Watch Team to create and post a comment on the Clayton Watch website on her behalf, which was rejected by the Clayton Watch Team.
In this communication, Tamara included Holly Tillman (using Holly's personal email), Rich Enea, and Clayton Watch in the Cc field. When the Clayton Watch Team replied to Tamara’s email, they utilized the “Reply All” function, which clearly included the Cc information from Tamara’s original message. See image above.
Apparently, Tamara has been communicating with Councilmember Tillman via her personal email instead of Holly's city email address. Makes you wonder why? Is Tamara trying to hide her correspondence with Tillman from the public and the council? Besides, if Holly has any grievances about her personal email address being exposed, they should be directed towards her mouth piece, Tamara Steiner, at the Clayton Pioneer, not Clayton Watch.
Additionally, after reflecting on Holly’s claims and discussing them with other community members, a pertinent question arises: why is Tamara Steiner and the Clayton Pioneer communicating with council member Holly Tillman through her personal email? It may be worthwhile to investigate their (Tamara’s and Holly’s) previous communications to understand the context better.
Perhaps it is time for someone to submit a public records request to uncover the possible origins of past leaks from city hall that have appeared in the Clayton Pioneer that have cause much of the division in our small little town. The call for a Grand Jury investigation should be directed towards them (Tamara Steiner and Holly Tillman) since their the ones that seem to be undermining city staff and the community. https://claytonca.gov/fc/city-clerk/public-records-requests/public-records-request-form.pdf.
Honesty would be a welcome change. To read the complete article, click on the following link: https://www.claytonwatch.org/2024/12/clayton-watch-responds-to-tamara.html
Thanks for reading,
Gary Hood
Concerned Citizen