This letter is about the editorial (July 21) titled “Government doesn’t work without citizen participation.” Stated “that in small-town America, governance requires participation, collaboration and a variety of viewpoints to get the job done.” I can’t agree more.

But in Delta County we have county commissioners who either drive out individuals on citizen boards/commissions and/or employees. Why? Because they have their own personal agendas to push through on an unsuspecting public. They do this by handpicking individuals to represent the public who either don’t question what they say or feel they are not educated enough on a particular subject to speak up.

Has anyone wondered why since the current board of commissioners were elected under the disguise of transparency and ethics that both employees and citizen representation on boards/commissions have changed. Prior airport manager and assist manager both resigned. Parks manager resigned and chairwoman of the Parks and Recreation Commission resigned after months of being harassed by a county commissioner.

When prior citizens who served on county boards/commissions didn’t resign, they were removed by county commissioners and replaced. The best example was when Alan Ettenhofer was removed from the Parks and Recreation Commission because he attended a county board meeting and sat in the wrong seat (there are no assigned seats for the public at monthly board meetings). The county has strict policies about the removal of individuals from any board or commission. Did they violate their own policy, 100%, but they don’t care, because their end game is the goal: Remove anyone that would stand in their way and question them in any way. I have heard them constantly try to rewrite history with none or minimum pushback from other board members; mission accomplished.

Ettenhofer’s story doesn’t end there: after chairwoman Mary Harrington resigned, county commissioner Matthew Jensen asked Al to put back in for the commission seat and he would get Al reinstated to the commission to right the wrong that was previously done. Well, when that time came, Jensen voted with Christine Williams and Kelli vanGinhoven to seat another that Williams wanted. Hats off to Patrick Johnson and John Malnar, who voted to correct the prior injustice that was done to a dedicated citizen getting involved with this county for the people.

It seems that Johnson is the only commissioner that will question Williams and vanGinhoven on a regular basis. Prior to the vote to fill the seat, Williams and vanGinhoven said that Al didn’t fill out the application correctly — bull. The county had Al’s previous application on file and on the second one under references he just put the agency name down instead of the individual. Williams and vanGinhoven stated that they wouldn’t look at the first application, but somehow William’s husband Joe Kaplan’s first application got sent out in the board packet (presumably by mistake). Really, seriously, do they believe we are that stupid? Another reason Williams didn’t like Al’s application was that “he only knew about whitetail deer.” Whitetail deer was the main reason that the county forest received funding.