Dear Editor: 

For anyone attending or watching last week’s city council meeting, it is no longer deniable: our city is in free fall, leaderless, and slipping into corruption rapidly. 

We have a criminal as our mayor pro tem, a vacant city council seat up for grabs, a fired city manager and a questionable bar going in across the street from Downey High School. 

How did we get here? Well, things were just too good for so long. The voters left it up to someone else to decide for them. 

Can we save our beautiful city? Sure we can! We are waking up from our sleep. This also was evident last week as the city council chambers were full of concerned voters. 

We need our city council to work for us, not for their own future or financial interests. We need transparency. Who in city leadership has entered into the bid process to acquire land or a business license, where are they getting their funding? Who has undisclosed legal or criminal issues, a DUI or arrest record? Who has been evicted or gone into bankruptcy? We deserve to know before we are asked to vote for them, not after the fact. 

We are expected as residents of Downey to abide by its ethical standards, its laws, codes and moral expectations. We are a "Character Counts" City. It is time for our city leaders to begin to live by those same standards.

Victoria Smith
Downey