On June 19 Pine Cove Water District (PCWD) General Manager Jerry Holldber dispatched a missive to each customer in Pine Cove in which he denigrated the Town Crier’s coverage of the water district. He claimed this newspaper had published “many stories” that were “filled” with misleading and incorrect information about PCWD.

I was not aware of any TC stories containing any factual inaccuracies about PCWD, so in a July 2 editorial I publicly invited Holldber to point them out, assuring him that the Town Crier would publish corrections regarding each inaccuracy. This is our policy with regard to everyone, not just PCWD.

I thought perhaps he’d missed my editorial, so on July 8, I mailed a letter, addressed to him directly, asking him to please advise me of the factual inaccuracies the Town Crier had published about PCWD so we could apologize and correct them.

I closed my letter stating that I was concerned about two matters:

  “(1) We do not wish to publish inaccurate information regarding any person or entity, and, if we do, we wish to apologize and correct same.

“(2) We do not wish to see the Town Crier accused in print of publishing inaccurate information regarding any person or entity, if it has not done so.” 

Well, another month has passed, and still Holldber has not advised me of even one claimed inaccuracy in Town Crier reporting about PCWD. Since he wrote that “many” TC stories have been “filled” with misleading and incorrect information about PCWD, one would think it would be easy for Holldber to identify some of them. But he has not identified one.

In his letter to PCWD customers, Holldber also stated: “[W]e have been in constant contact with our Legal Counsel, and we have done nothing wrong.” In my letter to him, I pointed out that he did not say he had discussed Town Crier coverage with his legal counsel, nor did he say that his legal counsel opined that he had done nothing wrong regrading matters the TC had reported. So, I asked Holldber to have his legal counsel phone me about this matter. That hasn’t happened either.

I suppose he’d say something like he’s got better things to do than waste his time responding to that … whatever. If that’s his current position, he’s now being dismissive of something that he once thought was important enough to complain about to PCWD customers.

Sadly, I expect the people of Pine Cove will surely remember this the next time Holldber makes a factual statement about the Town Crier … or about anything else, for that matter.