News release from the Hughes for Mayor campaign:
Hughes Addresses Henry’s False Attacks
Area Leaders Join Hughes to Denounce the Weeks of Misleading Henry Ads(October 25, 2011)- Today, former Allen County Council President and Republican nominee for Mayor Paula Hughes addressed the months of attacks that Tom Henry has levied against her. She was joined by Allen County Commissioner Nelson Peters, Allen CountyCouncilmen Darren Vogt, Roy Buskirk and Paul Moss, and City Councilwoman Liz Brown.
“Tom Henry’s campaign has been misleading the public and outright lying about me for months but claiming that I can cause floods and saying I want to stop leaf pickup is absurd,” Hughes said.
Today’s Journal Gazette verified the claim that Paula Hughes would stop leaf pickup “simply isn’t true.”
Councilwoman Liz Brown said, “the mayor’s claims are particularly shocking given the fact that he cut leaf pickup during his tenure in the mayor’s office.”
In his latest TV commercial, Mayor Henry says that Paula Hughes cut snow removal. False again. The Allen County Commissioners issued a statement saying, “at no time has the removal of snow or ice from County highways been cut, eliminated or reduced in priority as a result of any loss of funding.”
“We had 29 trucks on the road prior to the Aboite annexation and we’ll have 29 trucks out there again this year,” Commissioner Peters said. “I am disappointed that Mayor Henry would use county snow removal as a political football.”
County Council members addressed Tom Henry’s claim about Paula’s “record of increasing our taxes.”
“Paula Hughes and I were elected together and have worked hard to be good stewards of public dollars,” Allen County Council President Darren Vogt said. “We only served together for eight years. That claim is simply false.”
Councilman Vogt addressed the issue even further in an op-ed in September.
Councilman Moss took issue with the tax claim, too. “Tom Henry pressured Paula, Darren and me to support the wheel tax, but we said no. Now, he is trying to paint Paula Hughes as a tax hiker, that is laughable.”
Paula Hughes concluded by saying, “Enough is enough. Everyone knows that Fort Wayne is hurting. We need to get serious about reducing the city’s half-a-billion dollar debt and creating jobs in Fort Wayne.”