BELLE — Most people in the area know me, or at least recognize the name, much like we all do with each other. That’s one of the reasons I love Belle. We know each other and we care. We come together as a community when we have neighbors in need. We comfort each other in times of sorrow and celebrate each accomplishment.

Not much has changed in that aspect for as long as I can remember. This is a good town filled with good people. A person, no matter what their character is, will make mistakes. Good people make mistakes. They are not immune to being human.

A single mistake doesn’t speak to anyone’s overall character. What does, however, is how they respond when their mistakes are caught.

Along with Sunshine Law violations, the previous city administration ignored state laws when they created a street commissioner position for Marshal Jerry Coborn. That article along with another one dealing with Sunshine Law issues with the city are in this edition of The Advocate. I encourage all of you to read them.

The thing is, I understand where the board’s hearts were when they attempted their workaround to get Marshal Coborn paid when he was sworn in. They wanted to make sure he was paid a fair wage for the work he was doing in our community and thought they had a solution.

This is where I have to stress how disappointed I am that we are in this current situation. It is all due to a lack of transparency from both the old and new board.

When I reported they voted to dissolve the street commissioner position in the May 29 edition of The Advocate it seemed that city administrators were making efforts to rectify mistakes made by the previous board.

I sent questions out on June 2 to the current board of aldermen. I was prepared and excited to write an article outlining how the new council found mistakes made by the old administration and was actively taking steps to correct those issues.

There was no transparency with the previous board. I had hopes that the new administration would be more open but it quickly became apparent as the weeks rolled on that they were not going to answer my questions, or in the case of new members couldn’t because they had no inner working knowledge of the previous administration.

The only person to respond was Alderman Kevin Guffey, who was not on the previous board.

An article in the June 19 edition of The Advocate titled “Dissolved city position raises legality questions” has the list of questions along with a note that the article was scheduled to be printed on June 12 but if they needed a few more days, to let me know. I ended up holding the article for an additional week hoping for answers.

When there was no communication from elected officials, that meant I had to dive into public records to investigate the situation. I found out why they were silent and turned all my information over to the proper agencies. I have to stress that all of the information I found is a matter of public record and is available for anyone to request.

There is no newspaper bias here and there is no election-related bias either. The only bias comes from the city not being transparent and providing documents that are readily available and that we all have the right to view.

This transparency issue has now also gone into the realm of possibly endangering the lives of residents who are autoimmune compromised or have other health factors.

I am talking about the removal of a Facebook post made on July 8 concerning a boil advisory. People with health factors need to know if there is any chance of contamination with their drinking water and I feel that they, and everyone else in the town, should let our elected officials know enough is enough.

If a post like this was removed, considering the board’s consistent pattern of behavior, what are the chances that vital information isn’t being relayed to the citizens of Belle in a timely manner? Especially when the prevailing directive appears to be to avoid communicating with the newspaper.

City officials still have not addressed that issue since my final letter to the board, dated July 24. I have asked for The Advocate to include copies of the correspondence at the end of this editorial or on their website or Facebook page.

I asked them for news to give to the community and, with only one exception, no one else from the city reached out about anything they feel the town should know.

I want everyone in Belle to have prompt, accurate news. There are a lot of positive stories in the community that I want covered in The Advocate but can’t be because of issues like transparency with the board. Space is limited in the newspaper and, unfortunately, the most pressing news needs to be disseminated first for the public good.

This pushes these positive articles to the back burner where they quietly fade away. That hurts. This town and the people in it deserve to be remembered for the good things, not the bad. We only need to be aware of the bad so it doesn’t happen again.

I have a positive, heart-warming story in the works for next week’s edition of The Advocate. It’s about people making positive changes for the benefit of their fellow man with no thought of personal gain, a staple of what makes our community amazing. I hope there will be room to run it.