{"id":1612,"date":"2018-08-18T23:24:13","date_gmt":"2018-08-18T23:24:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.arkansasfreedom.net\/?p=1612"},"modified":"2018-08-18T23:24:13","modified_gmt":"2018-08-18T23:24:13","slug":"dysfunctional-city-government-punishes-taxpayers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arkansasfreedom.net\/?p=1612","title":{"rendered":"Dysfunctional city government punishes taxpayers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Re: The Times Record front page story August 16, 2018\u2014\u201cCity streets prone to flooding\u201d <\/strong><\/p>\n

August 18, 2018<\/p>\n

Below are some of the items highlighted in the article, but cost to the taxpayers goes unmentioned as well as the causes.<\/p>\n

1.\tFlooding is the result of drains not cleaned in years, plus OLD drainage plans
\n2.\tStreet Dept & Police forced to CLOSE several roads , plus street teams had to be used for \u201cmitigation\u201d work
\n3.\tCity NEVER had a drainage system cleaning program which is common around the country. Cleaning pipes would \u201cmitigate\u201d the flooding problem
\n4.\tState Dept. of Transportation admits flooding on Towson Ave. (Hwy 71 portions) is caused by the fact it was built 75 years ago and never updated, plus flooding on Rogers Ave is technically Hwy 22 which is also under the state\u2019s jurisdiction. (The state neglects, along with the city)<\/p>\n

The article failed to make the grade due to the lack of research into the causes of these decades old serious problems. Here are just a few historical facts which gave rise to this ongoing fiasco.<\/p>\n

In the year 1985, citizens voted on and passed a specified\/dedicated 1% street\/sewer\/waste water tax which remains in force to this day. By 2010 the tax had generated $650 million, $200 million more than the recent and 3rd Federal Consent Decree issued to the city of Fort Smith by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). <\/p>\n

There has been no stated amount of revenue generated by the tax in the last 7 years, but it is fair to say in the ensuing 32 years the total amount could approximate $1 Billion that have fallen into city coffers by the 1% street\/sewer tax. And \u201cwe the people\u201d are the recipients of bad streets & a failed sewer system. <\/p>\n

The most recent EPA mandate of an ESTIMATED (we all know what that means) $480 million, plus a $300,000 fine and 12 years to complete occurred in Dec. 2014, totaling 39 years of apparent malfeasance & misfeasance, absent sewer and ground water complete overhauls. <\/p>\n

Adding insult to injury, City Manager Carl Geffken now proposes to add another 12 years to the Federal Consent Decree, making a grand total of 51 years (1\/2 century) that Fort Smith city government will have failed to address the faulty sewer & ground water deficiencies. Why?<\/p>\n

In the meanwhile an ESTIMATED $1 Billion is unaccounted for and they recklessly involve citizens\u2019 money in meaningless, curious & unnecessary pursuits without citizens\u2019 knowledge or permission, resulting in a change of the image of the city, likely for private personal gains. A few include the recycling debacle ($52,000 monthly for 3 years) replete with no transparency, the Files\/Webb Softball $2 million Complex fiasco, the bribe by Delta Dental to fluoridate Lake Ft. Smith against voters\u2019 wishes, citizens\u2019 money poured into the nascent Marshal\u2019s Museum (originally billed as a private endeavor), $700,000 yearly into the failed Convention Center, the discovery of undeposited checks from Van Buren for water usage stashed away in someone\u2019s desk drawer, alleged city business conducted surreptitiously by email, and the list goes on & on & on. Corruption in government is endemic.<\/p>\n

How about some independent audits, some real investigative reporting, and some police investigations? Where did the money go—who got it and what happened to it? Taxpayers & rate payers (e.g. sewer bills increased 167%) deserve to know and the perpetrators deserve to pay.<\/p>\n

Barbara McCutchen
\nArkansas Freedom dot com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Re: The Times Record front page story August 16, 2018\u2014\u201cCity streets prone to flooding\u201d August 18, 2018 Below are some of the items highlighted in the article, but cost to the taxpayers goes unmentioned as well as the causes. 1. Flooding is the result of drains not cleaned in years, plus OLD drainage plans 2. … Continue reading Dysfunctional city government punishes taxpayers<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33,32,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1612","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-city-government-offenses","category-city-politics","category-forced-redistribution"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arkansasfreedom.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1612","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arkansasfreedom.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arkansasfreedom.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arkansasfreedom.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arkansasfreedom.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1612"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/arkansasfreedom.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1612\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1613,"href":"https:\/\/arkansasfreedom.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1612\/revisions\/1613"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arkansasfreedom.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1612"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arkansasfreedom.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1612"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arkansasfreedom.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1612"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}