TUCSON, Ariz. (KGUN) — UPDATED (12/12) — A push to incorporate the community of Vail into a town or city is moving forward, but now also being held back by controversy.
The "Incorporate Vail, AZ?" committee plans to put the incorporation question on the ballot next fall. Committee members announced that news at a community meeting at Cienega High School on Thursday, Dec. 1.
The Vail Voice—a monthly newspaper serving Vail and Southeast Tucson—featured an article on the front page of its December issue that recapped the meeting.
However, that issue was published and mailed to homes in Vail as early as Wednesday, Nov. 30, before the meeting actually took place.
The article featured quotes, details and observations from a meeting still days away.
"Incorporate Vail, AZ?" president David Hook says there was no intent to deceive anyone.
“The Vail Voice said they would be able to hold off mailing The Vail Voice until December 3rd,” he said. “[The committee] wrote it as though there was a reporter there in the room… We agreed that it would be OK for her to have that information in The Vail Voice, as long as it wasn’t delivered to people until after the meeting.”
However, when the paper went out before the meeting, confusion and concern broke out on social media sites like Nextdoor and Facebook.
“It became more obvious that we weren’t supposed to know this was pre-written,” said Vail resident Chuck Decker. “I was upset. I still am. [Incorporation] is an important question.”
Decker and others believe the article being written before the event took place damages the committee’s and the newspaper’s integrities.
“If they did this once, what did they do that I don’t know?” said Decker. “And what are they doing next?”
“Are they credible? Are they actually telling us what the truth is?” asked Jessica Ogiba, another Vail resident.
Last week, Hook told KGUN “everything in the article came true,” explaining that the committee knew the meeting schedule and who would be speaking ahead of time.
But some readers also took issue with certain excerpts from the article, which seemed to anticipate that the community’s response to the incorporation meeting would be positive:
• “Promptly at 5:30 p.m. the doors were open and long line [sic] of awaiting residents rushed to occupy the best seats in Cienega High School’s student union.”
• “The news was greeted with claps and cheers. And history was made.”
Vail residents also criticized the committee and newspaper for not having a quicker or stronger response to the controversy.
“I was just more disappointed to see that they didn’t try and handle it immediately,” said Ogiba.
After an apology was posted on the committee website on Wednesday, Dec. 7, The Vail Voice held a town hall on Zoom to hear concerns from the community on Thursday, Dec. 8., where Hook apologized to listeners.
“It’s completely our fault and we completely own this,” he said. “And it may end up in major changes moving forward… We cannot let an organization that’s trying to represent the people of Vail have any hint of impropriety.”
The Vail Voice owner and editor Lucretia Free clarified at the beginning of the meeting that the newspaper "does not take a position on issues and has no paid reporters," using volunteer writers for content.
Anne Gibson writes for the paper and wrote the controversial article. She also served as "Incorporate Vail, AZ?"'s Director at Large.
“I’m truly, truly sorry,” she said during the virtual town hall. “It has been the most humiliating and embarrassing thing that has ever happened to me."
She later added, "I truly, truly believe that incorporation is the best thing for Vail, but I don’t expect you to believe anything I say.”
Gibson did not say why she wrote the article as if the meeting had already happened.
Now when it comes to the incorporation debate, people in Vail say they just want clarity.
“I would hope it would resolve itself in some way,” Decker said of the situation. “So that the community would get honest, straightforward, trustworthy information, that people could make a decision.”
When asked for an interview, Free instead directed KGUN to the virtual town hall meeting and provided a link to the audio recording.
Allison DeRoque Platt confirmed to KGUN she resigned on her own as an "Incorporate Vail, AZ?" committee member on Monday, Dec. 5 because of The Vail Voice article incident.
Nancy Campman-Crofts told KGUN she also resigned from the committee, but says it was because her work responsibilities increased.
In a new apology posted Sunday night, the "Incorporate Vail, AZ?" committee said Gibson has resigned as her role as Director at Large.
The post described Gibson as "just an overly enthusiastic 83-year-old woman, that has been serving this community for decades, projecting her excitement for our community to become a real town."
On Monday, Hook described to KGUN the committee’s approval process used for the original article. Hook said that while Gibson emailed the article to committee members before publication, he is unsure how many, if any, read it.
Hook said only Gibson, the committee’s communications director, and himself, the director, were required to officially sign off on the article before sending it to The Vail Voice. Hook says he was out of town and never formally approved the article before it was sent to the newspaper for publication.
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