Mayor Pro Tem Jan Harnik Takes Issue with Anyse Smith’s Claim that Council Members Did Not Know that Residents of Unincorporated Palm Desert are Not Eligible to Serve on City Boards [Opinion]

PALM DESERT — I read the article titled Palm Desert Geography Confuses Voters, Candidate regarding Anyse Smith and the address confusion.  In it, she is quoted as saying, “I had no idea and City Council didn’t either, which is why they appointed me to the committee, . . .”

Please allow me to address that.  I am reasonably comfortable speaking for my council colleagues on this issue —but I speak only for myself.

On Ms. Smith’s application, she states, “I have been a Palm Desert resident since 2014” and “I have been a registered voter in Palm Desert since: 2014”.  Ms. Smith also states, “I’ve been a Palm Desert resident for the past 8 years.” And adds “I am a proud resident of this city . . . “.

Those statements would indicate to anyone reading them, that Ms. Smith is a resident of Palm Desert. I am clear that the committees for which Ms. Smith applied, require residency in the City of Palm Desert and took her at her word. The city receives numerous applications for Committees and Commissions and after sorting through them, the City Clerk team puts them in notebooks and provides those notebooks to the council.  The council does not fact-check every application – we trust the applicants and what they have written.  If Ms. Smith thought her address indicated she lived in the City of Palm Desert, the fact that she never received a City of Palm Desert ballot from 2014 until 2022, and never voted in a Palm Desert council race, should have alerted her, and created concern worth addressing. Why didn’t it?

I take issue with Ms. Smith stating that either I didn’t know or, it was OK with me. I take the responsibility of my position seriously. I simply trusted Ms. Smith at her word.

 

 

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