We realize this isn’t what everyone does in politics, but if you’re going to read the information and analysis you find here at afelection.info, we want you to know who we are, what we want, and what we’ll be doing here, so you can evaluate it properly.

Who We Are

We are David Rodeback, who’s doing most or all of the writing; and Rod Martin, who paid for the signs you’ll probably see around town, which say “Learn BEFORE you vote – afelection.info,” and who weighs in on the content and approach of these posts, among other things. Several other helpful folks have provided facts, opinions, and encouragement.

We are not affiliated with or funded by any candidate or campaign. No candidate approves what we post here. Some candidates may like it, but probably not all of them.

What We Want

What we want is simple: good local government. We think this depends on blowing away the chaff — the deception and misinformation which sometimes spreads systematically about key issues — and electing the best available candidates to the American Fork City Council and as as Mayor of American Fork.

For example, in the 2015 election cycle we want you to be able to evaluate the truth and accuracy of a report that American Fork residents have the fourth or fifth highest tax municipal tax burden in Utah. The study is fatally flawed, and the flaw is pretty obvious, but one PAC doesn’t care, and one candidate is passing around their fliers. We won’t just explain; we’ll give you a link to the study, so you can check it yourself.

When you see a graph showing (but carefully not actually saying) that American Fork has the highest property tax rate among cities in Utah County, we want you to know the full picture before you vote — because good people with bad information make bad decisions. We want you to realize that they left cities with higher rates off the graph. We’ll leave it to you to wonder why. We ‘ll give you a link to official documents with the needed information.

When they complain that water rates are unnecessarily high and blame this on the incumbents, we want you to understand the truth, which is . . . well, different.

And if you just feel like you don’t know the candidates very well, we’ll give you bite-size audio chunks of the candidates answering questions at public meet-the-candidates events. We won’t hide any of the audio — though we’ll delete some of the housekeeping, the Pledge of Allegiance, and so on. We’ll provide some notes to help you keep track of what’s going on in each chunk, such as a list of questions and the order in which the candidates answered each question.

What You Can Do

Learn before you vote. Then vote as you think best. (If you voted early, we’ll assume you knew the candidates already, at least well enough to pick three of the four with confidence. But you’re still welcome here.)

You have the opportunity to comment on virtually anything at this site. Comments are moderated to avoid spam, but you don’t have to agree with anything here to have your comment approved. You just have to be civil and relevant — and the test for relevancy is pretty generous.

If you like what you find here — or just want to discuss it more widely — please post links on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media. We’ll give you some graphics to help with that.

Back to Where We Started

If you want more chatter from the same people, David Rodeback’s old blog about politics and everything else is still at LocalCommentary.com. He blogs occasionally about politics and government (not specific to American Fork) at FreedomHabit.com and about books, writing, religion, and other topics — also occasionally — at BendableLight.com.

Or drop by Rod Martin’s business, World Class Auto Repair, on Main Street in American Fork.