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Alyssa May is a member of both the Orem Elementary School and Lakeridge Junior High’s PTAs. She says she is just a mom, a pre-Kindergarten aid and loves her kids.

May is also opposed to splitting Orem schools away from Alpine School District and has made her views against Proposition 2 public.

Imagine her surprise when she opened an envelope mailed with a Christmas stamp on the corner and hate mail inside.

“It was mailed to me,” May said. “It was mean spirited and trying to hurt me.”

May was featured on a vote “No” on Proposition 2 mailer with several other individuals and couples saying “Your neighbors are voting no on Proposition 2.”

Courtesy photo

May’s hate letter was a remake of that mailer — a cut and pasted copy of one side of the card. Instead of the original mailer, the sender changed the card to read, “The Who’s Who of idiots trying to indenture Orem,” with a hashtag #ignorantfools on the bottom.

Council member Tom Macdonald received a hate mail letter as well.

“You can’t be in community service like I have been without seeing this before. I just assumed that the #ignorantfools was referring to the sender of the letter. There’s no room for this type of mailer (hate mail) in Family City USA,” MacDonald said.

Others on the mailer received the hate mail, according to Val Hale, but not him. The incident was one of several Proposition 2-related events in the past week.

On Tuesday, Orem Mayor Dave Young read a statement at the City Council meeting regarding complaints received at the Attorney General’s office. Some of those complaints were for shutting down social media platforms over live broadcasting discussion on resolutions focusing on the Alpine School District bond and Proposition 2.

The Orem City Statement notes:

“At two recent city council meetings, the City of Orem stopped the livestream of a portion of its meetings on its website in order to avoid a potential violation of Utah Code Section 20A-11-1203, which prohibits publishing argument for or against a ballot proposition on the city’s website. Both meetings were still recorded in their entirety, and a link to the recording of the entire meetings is available upon request to the City Recorder. The City’s actions were in full compliance with the Utah Open and Public Meetings Act and were done in an effort to comply with the law and not to skirt it. As reported by Fox13, the Utah Attorney General’s office has reviewed complaints about the discontinuance of the livestream and found that the meetings were not ‘improperly closed because the in-person meeting continued with the public still in the room.’ The City of Orem will continue to make every effort to ensure that its actions are in compliance with the law.”

On Sunday, Michelle Lee Steele, a proponent of Proposition 2 and daughter of city council member Terry Peterson, put out a video acknowledging she sent a press release that was reported on, incorrectly, by some news agencies. She was requesting corrections and apologies from those agencies.

Through all of this, cottage meetings and public meetings supporting both sides of the issue continue on a near daily basis.

One of the biggest questions residents are asking is how, or will, Orem re-unify after the election.

MacDonald, who is opposed to Proposition 2, put a video on Facebook with Derek Roney, a neighbor and supporter of the proposition.

The two are shown holding signs with their arms around each other while encouraging residents to allow for individual opinions and to stay friends.

“My whole purpose in doing this was to take some of the sting out of all of this,” Macdonald said. “Let’s all unite for a better Orem on Nov. 9.”

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