Priorities questioned at top of Town gov’t
Letters to the Editor
What a disappointment to hear the first of the biggest challenges for 2025 coming out of Mayor Ron Williams’ mouth to be social media misinformation. Are we not past this?
President Biden, early in his failed presidency, established, and quickly folded, his Disinformation Governance Board or Ministry of Truth. It was shut down due to constitutional issues, but more importantly and prominently, nobody wants to be censored in a free society. Why does Mayor Williams want to censor and shut down his constituents viewpoints?
Is it because his constituents are not happy with his wasting millions on an empty and useless brick building with dubious history? Is it because people aren’t happy with the constant gaslighting about traffic not being a problem; people do not think the ATMS (Advance Traffic Management System) is pretty phenomenal as stated in (an) article.
Perhaps he is weary of constituents bringing up concerns about overly dense development, including sparsely populated Biddle Farm businesses and apartments popping up around Town? Maybe it is because spending $55,000 on a tiny outdoor ice rink for six weeks is considered wasteful.
I agree the Town of Farragut communication manager (Wendy Smith) does a good job getting information out to the community, but I don’t agree that censorship of constituents is necessary or appropriate. Mayor Ron Williams needs to reconsider his priorities.
~ Adam Atherton, Farragut
Editor’s Note: We published a front page story in our Wednesday, Feb. 5, issue where — at least in the body of the story — Mayor Ron Williams first mentioned social media misinformation. This seems to be pointed out in the above letter’s first paragraph.
If the letter’s author is referring to any possible Williams “social media misinformation” quotes from other public forums and/or publications from which he is forming an opinion, that is not the point in this note.
However, our readers can decide if the mayor’s quotes from our Feb. 5 story — on the “social media misinformation” issue — add up to censorship upon a second look:
“I think this coming year, we need to be very, very proactive in our social media. What I mean by that is Wendy (Smith, communication manager) does a good job with what she puts out there, and I think we can expand on that and make it even better.
“We have a lot of misinformation that gets out there … I think (the social media) would be a help.”
