I was disappointed to see that in your story about Apple Valley Assistant Town Manager Marc Puckett’s driving record, you only enumerated traffic infractions in San Bernardino County (A history of infractions: Between 2011 and 2014, Apple Valley’s finance director paid more than $3,000 in traffic fines, Daily Press, December 7, 2017).

As a former local elected official and planning commissioner, I look at the definition of the office to include as its first priority, service to the public. Under no circumstances is it appropriate for elected officials or government employees to degrade or demean taxpayers or to withhold information relative to how public funds are being spent.

By now everyone must have heard that Apple Valley Assistant Town Manager for Finance Marc Puckett was involved in what is being investigated for a felonious hit-and-run that occurred on July 20 (Vehicle belonging to AV town manager involved in hit-and-run, Daily Press, August 7, 2017). Briefly, a woman claims that Mr. Puckett rear-ended her on the I-15 at 11:30 p.m. Mr. Puckett claims she is lying, even though he has acknowledged abandoning his car that night off the side of the freeway in a flood control ditch, in the location where the woman claims to have been hit, and Mr. Puckett’s car appears to have been totaled. As if that’s not enough, Mr. Puckett’s account of what happened that night is incomplete at best, and what he has said about events on that night makes no sense.

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In just a couple of sentences, Frank Robinson managed to sum up just how bad things became in Apple Valley with him as Town Manager (Former Apple Valley Town Manager Frank Robinson looks to the future, Daily Press, July 29, 2017).