Is silence really golden, or is that just g(u)ilt?
After three week's waiting, I had heard nothing from any of the councillors. So I wrote again, and once more addressed my letter to all of the councillors. In this second letter, I simply asked why I had received neither a response, nor even the courtesy of an acknowledgement. I waited for a further three weeks, but received nothing. Seven weeks had now passed since the attack, and the 'ticking time bomb' who had already struck twice was still moving freely among the vulnerable seniors, ready to go off at any time.
Had the councillors even received my letters? I had trusted the City Manager to forward my letters, but I had already encountered one dishonest city employee whom I had trusted to do his job properly but who had let us all down. Was I now being naive in presuming that the rotten wood I had discovered in one branch of the tree had not already spread further back to the trunk? I now regretted not having sent my letters by regular mail, since interference with the US Mail is a criminal offense, and would have been investigated promptly and vigorously.
Think of it. How likely would it be for you to write individual letters to a group of people, with a return address and a telephone number, and not receive any response at all from any of them? Well, if the letters were on a topic which was not of the slightest interest to the recipients, or if you were a persistent letter writer of whom they had grown tired, then perhaps the silence could be understood. But this letter concerned the safety of senior citizens whom the recipients of the letter rely on for their votes, and it was the first time I had ever written to them, so neither of these reasons applied in this case.
There were only two scenarios I could think of.
EITHER:
The letters had not been forwarded to the councillors as I intended them to be.
OR:
They had been forwarded, accompanied with an instruction from the administration that no acknowledgement of receipt be given. What might be the reason for such advice? One reason would be that the charges referred to in the letter (deception by an employee, or collusion between departments, both of which were detrimental to the interests of seniors) were true, and the City needed to protect itself from exposure to a lawsuit should a senior be injured as a result of the mismanagement which I had pointed out. If my complaint was acknowledged in any way, even if a councillor had written to me telling me, however politely, to get lost, the City could not then claim have been unaware of the danger.
So the seniors and other visitors to the Center would remain at risk of injury in order that the City (which is already in serious financial difficulties) could continue to support the generous salary, medical insurance and pension provisions which employees felt that they were entitled to. Paid for in large part, of course, by the seniors who were being placed at risk.
It was time to get an attorney. I believe in getting the biggest and best of everything, so I went for the biggest and best attorney in the state . . .