UPDATE #1: 9/26/03 - 5:00 A.M.: We received a message from Mr. Hill on our answering machine this morning, left last evening at 8:39 PM, asking us to remove his written endorsement for Mr. Dick for Council Pos. #5. Before we conisder doing so, however, a few questions needed to be cleared up. I sent emails to both Jim Flower and Brady Boucher, requesting they contact me, and left a phone message for Richard Hill. Jim Flower and I had two pleasant and detailed conversations Friday morning, and Mr. Hill returned my phone message just after 4:00 PM on 9/26.

UPDATE #2: 9/26/03, 4:50 PM: After two conversations with Jim Flower and John Dick, and three with Richard Hill (there was actually only one conversation with Mr. Hill but we were inexplictably disconnected three times), we have decided to temporarily accede to Mr. Hill's highly-charged demand to remove the letter he signed endorsing John Dick for council. During our conversation(s), Mr. Hill said he blames Mr. Dick for getting in touch with him to request his support, and even though he requested that Mr. Dick should "write something up" for him to sign, he did not think Dick would actually write anything. When I asked Mr. Hill whether he had read the letter Dick presented to him, he said yes, he had. And in answer to my question, "Then why did you sign the letter if you didn't agree with it?" Mr. Hill responded, "I don't know. My mind went blank." Regarding Hill's endorsement of Jim Flower in the last issue of theValley Review, Hill told me that although he said some nice things about Mr. Flower during his brief conversation with Editor Brady Boucher, Hill never told Mr. Boucher that he wished to endorse Flower. When I asked, "Then who wrote that quote from you that appeared in the Valley Review?" Mr. Hill responded, "Brady [Boucher] did." Mr. Hill also said that Dusty Boucher was going to try and speak with Editor Boucher to see if he would print a retraction of Hill's earlier bogus endorsement of Jim Flower.

Although I intiially told Mr. Hill that I would not remove his Dick endorsement from this website until a retraction is actually printed in theValley Review, I believe the charitable thing to do right now to ease Mr. Hill's mind is to remove the Dick endorsement temporarily, pending publication of the next issue of the Review.