2005 Broadside

Remember seeing this four years ago?

DO YOU KNOW WHAT’S BEEN GOING ON
AT CITY HALL THE PAST FEW YEARS?

I put out a flyer the weekend before the 2005 election detailing what I considered to be the worst problems of the Bergquist administration. In this blog, I will republish the flyer exactly, word for word, and take another look at those issues with four years perspective.

The first bullet:

Park City has spent $50,000 in attorney fees in the last six months – and another $6,000 to pay our prosecutor! The mayor kept a City Attorney who was doing almost NOTHING for Park City, missing over a third of the Council meetings in 2003 and half in 2004. The City Attorney was placed under supervised probation by the Kansas Supreme court in March, 2002 for neglecting his clients. The mayor reappointed him as our City Attorney in May, 2002 and again in May, 2003. In 2003 he pretty much stopped coming to court and missed nine City Council meetings. The City Council urged the mayor to find other counsel, but the mayor refused to appoint another attorney. So in May, 2004, no no one was appointed and the old attorney continued on. In October of 2004 the City Attorney was put on “leave of absence” by Park City. Park City was forced to pay other attorneys $50,000 to do his work after he was found in contempt of court for not showing up at a hearing. He was also paid $10,000 to do a codification for Park City which was never done. Why did the mayor give away $60,000 of our tax money without receiving contracted services from this attorney?

Perspective: I knew when I wrote this that the results of retaining such incompetent counsel was far greater than 50 or 60 thousand dollars, but tried to be conservative in my accusations. After taking office, I asked several Council members what they thought was the actual cost and one even said over $200,000! Lawsuits, appeals, grievances all contributed to this amount. There is no way to compute the cost of all the ordinances that we have lived by that are not legal, things like repeal of ordinances replaced by new ordinances and the old one was never repealed correctly – leaving us with conflicting laws. Having good legal advice is absolutely essential to good government and I know we have that now.

Bullet two:
Over 10% of last year’s general fund budget was left over at year’s end because it wasn’t spent. Why weren’t those drainage ditches paved as promised? There wasn’t enough money?

Perspective: The governing body in office from 2005 to 2007 took care of three of the worst problem ditches almost immediately. They are an ongoing problem that will never go away – we just have to keep allocating funds for that item and deal with them as they get critical. The $400,000 carryover from the 2004 budget was ridiculous!

Bullet three:
Sunnydale Addition was annexed by Kechi when it should logically have become a part of Park City. The mayor did not try to fight this or work with the residents of that area to convince them that we could provide services much more efficiently than Kechi or Valley Center could. He actually opposed our annexation. What was his hidden agenda? This is not the only time we’ve missed out on annexation opportunities. As the Wichita media asked, “Where was Park City when all this was going on?”

Perspective:
No change. Our bungled relations with the residents of Sunnydale have damaged Park City forever. The Kechi annexation cut us off from moving up
I-135 to the north for commercial development. The governing body was warned not to speak to those folks, but why on earth didn’t they approach active Park City residents to lobby them to come to an agreement with us? After numerous attempts to sue Kechi, our only avenue was to appeal – a very expensive avenue! I got a referral to an attorney with annexation experience. He told me that if we had annexed over Kechi instead of suing, we probably would have been better off. As it was, the court declared that we had no “standing” and an appeal would be just another waste of taxpayer dollars.

Bullet four:
Complaints from city employees against a fellow employee who had been treating them badly were ignored. One grievance was even given back to the employee by the mayor’s instruction and told that it had to be given to her immediate supervisor – with whom she had the problem. That supervisor turned out to be an accused serial killer. There are many personnel issues that need to be addressed by a new mayor.

Perspective:
Once again, Park City was left to defend itself. I guess the best thing I can say about this issue now is that our personnel manual was rewritten, the grievance procedure defined, and we have a human resource specialist on staff. The personnel issues also included a real mess in the police department that culminated in firings and lawsuits. The day after I took office, I had a meeting with members of the department and found out how bad it really was. The first meeting I presided over was disrupted by a police officer demanding an executive session with the mayor and council. After contacting the sheriffs of two counties, the head of the KBI and several attorneys, Richard LaMunyon agreed to tackle our problems.



Bullet five:
The mayor signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Iowa Tribe of Kansas and Nebraska to study building a casino in Park City after the City Council voted 7 to 1 to pursue the issue. Since then he has publicly opposed the building of the casino. If we back out of this commitment, Park City will most likely be sued for (Here we go again!) breaking a treaty with the Indians.

Perspective:
The former mayor has made opposing casinos the hallmark of his political career. I don’t know what his stance is now that Park City has expressed its support of expanded gaming twice – in the election of 2005 and in the referendum held the summer of 2007. My position on expanded gaming has always been that I support any legal enterprise that will bring in revenue to the City, enabling us to improve the lives of our residents.

On Dec. 10, 2002, the mayor voted with the Chisholm Creek Utility Authority to buy out the Chisholm Trail Sanitation Company. Why did he vote for this ill-advised purchase without City Council approval? Did the mayor vote with Bel Aire at the expense of the citizens of Park City?

Perspective:
With the perspective of four years on the CCUA Board of Directors, the last year and a half as its chair, I know that the former mayor could not confer with the council concerning the purchase of the sanitation company. That still does not make it the correct move. The company was then sold to Stutzman Refuse Disposal, financed by the CCUA. As a partner, Park City would be 50% responsible for repayment of the financing if anything should happen to Stutzman. This is exposure that served no purpose except to get the former operator of the plants out of a bad investment.
If I had known how bad the situation at the CCUA was, I would have at least given a great deal more thought to the decision to run for mayor. My next blog will detail the problems that were left by the previous boards, including the former mayor.

The mayor’s friends in “Voices of the Heartland” arranged a “forum” sponsored by the Fraternal Order of Police to be held on March 26. The web site for “Voices of the Heartland” listed no board of directors or affiliation with any other groups until last week. Who are these people? Is this some kind of secret society? The officers of the FOP say they know nothing abut this “forum” and did not agree to sponsor it.



Perspective:
Voices of the Heartland was an organization formed to fight expanded gaming in this area. They, along with Stand Up for Kansas and other anti-gaming groups were successful in preventing Sedgwick County from realizing the increased tourism and resulting revenue from a destination casino. And eliminating 350 jobs at the Kansas Greyhound Park. And we could sure use the 2,500 permanent, full-time jobs promised at the proposed casino now.

“The mayor contributed to all of these problems. Does the mayor have a lack of knowledge about how these things work? Does he not have the skills necessary to competently oversee the workings of the city? The mayor frequently shows up in time to have his picture taken with a project, without having anything to do with the work. He presents pizza to ice storm refugees – but the City pays for it. He expects discounted motel rooms because he’s the mayor. And this is a man who has repeatedly claimed to have been ‘chosen by God’ to be mayor of Park City. What do you think?”

Perspective: Well, what do you think four years later?