Editor:

During the Oct. 5 candidate forum, I was disappointed to hear Mr. Silver make numerous incorrect statements.

In his opening remarks, candidate Silver announced that if elected, he would immediately take steps to stop the wastewater fines currently being levied against the Town of Discovery Bay. As vice president of the DB CSD Board, I can state for a fact that there have been no fines levied against the Town of Discovery Bay for well over a year.

Next, candidate Silver claimed the CSD board never informed the community that a 16,400-gallon wastewater spill had occurred in June of 2010. He claimed the board did not take appropriate action in dealing with the spill and that the spill could have been prevented if the board had been more proactive in its maintenance procedures.

Not one word of Mr. Silver’s statement is true. On the day of the spill, Virgil Koehne, along with employees from Veolia Water, took immediate action to notify all residents who were affected by the spill. There were signs placed at strategic locations, door hangers left for every involved resident who was not at home, along with employees of both the Town of Discovery Bay and Veolia Water walking door-to-door outside of the area immediately affected in order to inform concerned residents as to what had taken place.

The leak was fixed promptly and proper notification was sent out in a timely manner. I am proud of the way our CSD board and town staff handled this unfortunate incident. I would also like to point out that there were no fines levied against the Town of Discovery Bay in relation to this incident.

Mr. Silver went on to state that the CSD board should have subscribed to a Code Red notification system that once activated would alert the community to occurrences such as the June, 2010 spill, and that if elected, he would push for such a subscription.

If candidate Silver had attended a single CSD meeting before deciding to run for election, he would have known that the CSD board decided against the Code Red system due to the fact that it didn’t fit the needs of the Town of Discovery Bay.

Candidate Silver announced that he was in possession of the solution to the issue of fire station closures. Mr. Silver has not attended a single meeting of the fire protection committee, nor has he offered this solution to the county Board of Supervisors. Am I safe to assume that Mr. Silver will only offer this solution if elected to the CSD board?

It concerns me that Mr. Silver has never voiced his concerns at a CSD meeting, nor has he approached any member of the board to seek clarification of the false statements he made during the candidate forum. I’m surprised that he chose to speak out against the very board he hopes to serve on without a single fact in his possession.

Simply put, I can not support Jonathan Silver for election to the Community Services District board.

Mark Simon, Discovery Bay