I understand officials have lives of their own or may have pre-scheduled events, but notifying the community of your absence would be the respectful thing to do, especially when you claim to want to be transparent with the community.
Dozens of audience members gathered together to plan out a brighter future for Merced while across the hall an entire row of chairs reserved for city representatives sat vacant. Each of the seats was labeled with the name of a local city, police or sheriff’s department official who had been specifically invited to the event.
“We’d like to highlight how all local law enforcement officials were invited here tonight but none of them bothered to show,” said Vanessa Zaragoza, 15, a youth activist and master of ceremonies at the Live Free event.
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