Spout Off Allegations Being Checked

STONE HARBOR – The Herald provides readers with multiple avenues for expressing opinions. One of our most popular is the anonymous Spout Off. Occasionally a Spout may contain specific assertions about public individuals which require verification. That happened twice in Stone Harbor recently. 
The Herald received a Spout, which asserted that Judith Davies-Dunhour, a candidate for mayor and a current member of borough council, once filed a discrimination suit against the borough. The Spout claimed that her action, taken when she was a member of the police department, should disqualify her for support as a candidate for mayor. It further asserted that her action had cost the borough a considerable sum in legal fees.
Davies-Dunhour contacted the Herald and branded the assertion in the Spout false, requesting that the Herald make an editorial comment to that effect and note as well that the Herald had verified that the assertion of a discrimination suit was false. We removed the Spout while looking into the matter. We found no evidence that Davies-Dunhour ever sued the borough for discrimination.
We did, however, receive further claims that the spirit of the Spout was correct and that it was merely mistaken about a formal suit. The Herald finds itself in a situation where we are asked to remove a Spout and to verify that what was asserted in the Spout was false in all respects. We cannot do either without looking further into the assertion, which we are doing.
The Herald takes no position on any discrimination claim and, were it verified, on what its impact on voters should or should not be. We look into such matters because we do not wish to remove a reader’s Spout without just cause and because we have been approached and asked to comment on the truth or falsity of the Spouter’s claims.
Another Spout from Stone Harbor stated that council member Joan Kramar was at a meeting in February 2013, where Atlantic City Electric first informed the borough of its plans to upgrade the electric power infrastructure on the island. The Spouter claimed that everyone at that meeting should be voted out of office.
Reacting to the Spout, Kramar contacted the Herald to say that she was not at the meeting in question. A sign-up sheet offered as evidence of her participation has no date on it and Kramer attests that she was not present.
There are competing claims of what went on in the February 2013 meeting. Some have argued that the borough learned of a needed upgrade to the infrastructure with no mention of the new steel galvanized poles that have materialized as part of that upgrade. Others assert that the borough representatives at the meeting must have known about the poles, and they did nothing to stop the project and did not inform the public.
The Herald has no special knowledge of the content of that meeting. Our issue is with the assertion that Kramar was at the meeting, which she denies. We will look into the facts of the Spouter’s claim.
Check the Herald website, www.capemaycountyherald.com for any update, as the request for public records may take seven days for the response, and the primary election is June 7.