ARE THERE LEGAL CONSEQUENCES FOR THE CITY’S WILLFUL VIOLATION (MISFEASANCE) AND THE STRONG POSSIBILITY OF MALFEASANCE FOR THEIR TREATMENT OF THE 30 YEAR 1% STREET/SEWER TAX THAT VOTERS HAVE AFFIRMED 3 TIMES? January 12, 2015
All governments are built on towers of lies, incestuous relationships & self-service: under the guise of “public service”.
For instance, City Managers emanating from the Strib Boynton era to Ray Gosack. Same time frame for City Directors who knowingly or unknowingly are and were complicit in perhaps the largest misapplication of citizen generated tax money in the city’s history—approximately $600 Million street/sewer tax money that accrued over a 30 year period replete with no accountability or explanations directed to city residents and in present day chronology from City Manager Gosack who has resided in the city government inner circles for 22 years. Nothing but dead silence from the city government functionaries.
Corruption you say, it would appear so.
Even more frightening is citizen silence and lack of outrage to confront the present Mayor & City Board. The significance of the silent Fort Smith citizenry for decades, for whatever their reasonings, has led to a rogue Fort Smith City Government.
In the wake of the 30 year $600 Million disappearance, the Federal Government’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has just levied a ½ Billion demand against the city of Fort Smith which requires the city over a 12 year time frame to renovate its sewer systems. Over that span the $1/2 Billion EPA demand will in all likelihood balloon to $3/4 Billion. Still little citizen outrage.
Recall that ½ of the $600 Million misapplication was specifically earmarked to overhaul the F.S. sewer & ground water systems, which should have begun some 25-30 years ago. If the city government had spent the 1% street/sewer tax as was so specified the sewer overhaul would have easily been completed by 1995 at at least one-sixth of the ultimate price the overhaul will cost in the coming 12 years.
In this regard, at the last City Board meeting (1/6/15) Mayor Sandy Sanders was asked the question (I paraphrase) “What happened to the sewer tax money?” Sanders haughtily responded, “We have spent $200 million on sewers.” Obviously, Sanders programed answer was designed to silence the questioner. Mayor Sanders, provide the proof to substantiate your claim. Sanders did not address the other missing $400 million.
The city’s misapplication of the 1% street/sewer tax is scandalous. Not entered into the equation is the 30 year history of continued dumping of raw sewage into the Arkansas River system and the routine flooding of businesses and homes throughout the city, accompanied by extreme personal cost.
Inflation factored into the EPA demand simply means that citizens will be paying for the same job 3 times, and still yet few protestations from citizens.
THE QUESTION THAT DEMANDS LEGAL ATTENTION: IS THERE NOT LEGAL PROTECTION FOR CITIZENS, INCORPORATED INTO THE INITIATED ACT, OR WHATEVER THE OFFICIAL TITLE IS PERTAINING TO THE 3 DECADE OLD STREET/SEWER TAX IN CASE OF CITY GOVERNMENT ABUSES OF THE TAX? SINCE THE ACT REQUIRES VOTER APPROVAL, SURELY THERE MUST BE SOME STATED REMEDY FOR CITIZENS AGAINST MISAPPLICATION OR OTHER ABUSES OF TAX MONIES BY ELECTED OR APPOINTED GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS. IN THIS VEIN, WHO PROTECTS CITIZEN TAX ASSETS SUCH AS THE SPECIFIED STREET/SEWER TAX AND WHAT ARE THE PENALTIES FOR ABUSE, IF ANY?
If citizens sit idly by as they are presently doing, the corruption will only exacerbate. Those elected and non-elected city officials that fit into the previously mentioned chronological envelope must be punished.
The hubris that the present & past city governments have shown is breathtaking. And now they come with more proposed citizen taxpayer abuse: The federal ultimatums described above are now roommates with pension funds, a 7-8% across the board pay raises…both absent funding, water fluoridation absent funding, huge shortfalls, massive cash disbursements to Griffin/Sicard’s “private” enterprise, the Marshal’s Museum, culminating with 87.59 miles of the United Nation’s Agenda 21 Trails & Bikeways
There have been at least 4 recent meetings for hustling this United Nations Agenda 21 Project. The 2 loudest voices are unelected NGO Parks Commission Chairperson Lorie Robertson and 1st National Bank employee Drew Linder who appears to be the spokesman for the money hustle which Linder says will begin at $9.5 to $17 million startup costs and as citizens plainly should understand, the cost will balloon exponentially. Linder, in all likelihood, is the power-broker in the massive Trail project for downtown investors Griffin, Sicard & their consummate insiders.
The above is another toxic example of city government appointing individuals to powerful NGO’s that have the authority to regulate citizens’ lives in any number of ways.
The first Trail meeting was reported to have been attended by about 5 dozen (60) people. This past Thursday night, the 3rd meeting was convened and was attended by a handful of bicyclists, runners, and 2 bicycle shop owners; the total number of attendees was about a dozen individuals and through the mouths of an NGO are supposedly speaking for 150,000 people in the metropolitan Fort Smith area and accomplishing the city’s con job.
This is more devious misdirection by the Fort Smith City Government projecting the image that citizens are demanding bikeways & trails and the city government is “just trying to accommodate” i.e. 60 people that dovetails into a dozen.
All this in the midst of more massive tax burdens being laid on the backs of city taxpayers.
How is it that the Directors can even consider something as non-essential as “Trails” while dumping tons of raw sewage into the once beautiful Arkansas River system?
The Fort Smith City Government is a Fraud, marching to their own drumbeat. Are some of the City Directors even aware?
YESTERDAY’S TIMES RECORD EDITORIAL: “TAXPAYERS MUST FACE BILLS, MORE”………TRANSLATION: SUCK IT UP, SHUT UP, PAY UP. Never once did the Times Record call for city accountability or a question as to WHERE THE MONEY WENT.
Joe McCutchen
arkansasfreedom.net