March 16th, 2009
NSBShadow.com....
Published Weekly, Direct from the Web.
Look to Us for the Latest Intrigues and
Tell Your Friends About Us!
Visitor on this Site This Week.
(Nearly 3000 hits last week. Thank you, enjoy your visit and come back to see more.)
You are:
1. We need help. The Mayor will not release a copy of what we have been told is a letter she wrote to the Angler’s Yacht Club which purportedly said she would not address their lease if elected Mayor. Well, she refuses to deny she sent such a letter or to produce it, so if you have a copy could you forward it to the Shadow?
2. When you pay a City Attorney $203,000 a year you would think that he would be listed on the City website and have a telephone number where you could reach him. Nope. This is a disappearing City employee. He does not want to be reached. Not in the directory or off the front page. You could reach him maybe through the main switchboard (424-2100) but it closes at 4:30 P.M.
3. The police department is running a new public information offensive. It is trying to make out that there is a “crime wave” to justify not only no cuts but an increase of police officers on the City payroll. The Shadow will analyze these so-called numbers, the limited number of arrests made here, and the nature of the arrests which seem to be mostly spousal abuse, drunks, small drug users, and people who refuse to give their correct names-- “resisting arrest without violence”. Not only is this not a crime wave, it does not even rise to a need for the police on the payroll today.
“Best Blogs of the Week”
(Edited for grammar and punctuation)
A POTPOURRI OF CITIZEN COMMENTS IS
AGAIN PROVIDED THIS WEEK IN ORDER
FOR YOU TO GET IN TUNE WITH THE
MOOD OF OUR READERS
Has any one looked at the website of the new city manager recruiter? If you look at the Recruiter's Website, he sent both of his sons to Brigham Young University. I thought that was kind of an odd thing to put on your website. I thought it was kind of an odd thing to hire (without any discussion) a guy as your recruiter that puts that on your website. The University has a long history with all types of intolerance towards blacks, women and minorities. In recent years the school has cleaned up it act. To me putting it on his website it is a speaking in tongues message intended to go over the heads of most people and communicate a message to right wing conservatives. What is says is I only recruit right wing conservative city managers and I will run off anyone else that applies. It also says I have the social skills to slip this right wing ideologue by the liberals and moderates on the city commission. That is how we ended up with 20 years of Frank Roberts and our current Chief of Police Ron Pagano. It sounds like this guy could find us both a new city manager and a new commodore for the Anglers club. It does not sound like the new city manager is going to be black, Jewish, or a woman.
3/7/2009, 4:47 pm Not an Angler
If you listen carefully to the city attorney what he said it was "the parties should talk." The opinion you were looking for is that the city attorney had examined the lease and all the facts and the Angeler's club was not violation of its lease. Under "what you thought you heard" the city attorney describe as the state of the law there would be no integrated public facilities open to women and minorties anywhere in America. All a city would have to do to get around the civil rights act would be lease its public facilities out to a groups of 400 or fewer members. This is a classic example of the city attorney and the city commission baffling the public with baloney (although I do not think the city attorney or city commission calls it baloney). The city leased the Angler's club after WWII. It was not undeveloped property. It had the Officer' Club built on it and was a very nice building. The $25.00 a year lease adjusted for inflation in $220.00 a year. A $25.00 a year lease in 1948 was really giving the property to the club for free. The average weekly pay in 1948 was 70.00 a week. 90 club members in 1948 were earning $6,353.66 a week and $330,389.99 a year.
3/11/2009, 11:52 am Frankly Speaking
this Sucks
According to the City 2007 Financial Audit, the Fund Value of the Firefighters Pension Fund was $11,822,271 on September 30, 2007.
According to the Minutes of the Firefighters Pension Board Meeting of November 13, 2008.......The Fund's Value was $10,969,562.09,
on September 30, 2008...
This represents a loss of $852,709 for the year.......when it should have been earning 8 percent interest!
So really, instead of having a Fund Value of $12,768,052 on September 30, 2009......we only have $10,969,562.09......
In other words; we have a shortfall of $1,798,490......
That's represents about $75 for every man women and child in the City.
3/11/2009, 9:24 am What
Mark Johnson keeps trying to help out the Angler's Club by pretending the city is doing something when its not!
3/12/2009, 8:03 am NSB Manager?
Whoever takes this job is going to have to be a real loser. Who in their right mind would take the job as New Smyrna Beach city manager? One of the city commissioners has been on national TV twice talking about being cured of cancer by space aliens. How crazy is that? The mayor got elected by running a smear campaign against her opponent and now she cannot produce her college diploma from a prestigious University in England that her campaign website seemed to imply she had. Three of the city commissioners are tied to the city’s police and fire unions. Half the fire department is earning over $60,000 a year in a community where the median wage is $29,000. The city commission is allowing its firefighters to retire in their 40’s, is giving all its firefighters $60,000+ pensions and has no idea in the world where the money is coming from to pay for the extravagant retirement packages. The city has a Utilities Commission that electric rates for an average homeowner are over $300.00 a year more than Winter Park and Orlando. A quick look at the UC’s W2s published on a local website show that the most common wage at the UC is $70,000 a year. Elections are coming up and even if you take the job, the people who are going to hire you do not appear that they are going to be around very long. The new group of city commissioners will probably fire you because they think only a loser would take a job working for the group that hired you.
NOTES
1. HOW NOT TO DISCUSS ISSUES
It is incredible that the Hew Smyrna Beach City Commission calls a meeting on (1) the Angler’s Yacht Club, and (2) the issue of a 10% reduction in the departmental budget. They did nothing. The so-called discussion on the Angler’s Club lease was a joke. Saying that someone did not break other laws, such as spitting on the sidewalk, is an evasion of addressing the issue of what laws they did break. Ask Mr. Gummey point blank about what laws they did break. Sally, you will note, neve asked Gummey about what laws they were guilty of breaking, and all he told them was how Daytona was breaking the law on giving a discount to the raceway on its lease (Gummey was there when we believe when they negotiated that lease too). O.K., Daytona is also in violation of the law which does not address whether our lease is valid. Moreover, we never heard that NASCAR was in violation of the civil rights laws. Maybe they too have a charter that limits membership “to white male citizens over the age of 21”. Give Sally an “F” in understanding simple legal concepts of discrimination.
As far as we know, none of the City departments apparently submitted anything serious on how they would reduce expenditures by 10%. Last time out , if you remember, the Fire Chief said that he could stop the abuse of overtime and sick leave and that the City Manager should do his job better. The Police chief could not see how he could do without even one of his four Commanders but that he would fire six or so patrolmen. Another “F” for Sally.
2. The Municipal Golf Course now has a new Manager at $58,000, kept the prior golf club manager who is now an assistant greens keeper at a salary of $82,000, and he “helps”, we guess, the green’s keeper who receives $$67,000. Add a 45% figure for pension and benefits to each of the salaries above. Instead of a 10% cut, it looks like an increase in almost 10% in payroll costs. They now have 25 employees and Hidden Lakes and Turnbull Bay we are told have less than 15 employees together. No matter what the Golf Advisory Board wants you to think, they lost $517,000 dollars last year.
“That is about what you pay each month on your car.”
THE CONSTANTLY CHANGE STORY OF WHERE THE MAYOR WENT TO COLLEGE
When Sally Mackay began her campaign for mayor, she had a problem. She was a lightweight. The question was how to fix it. The solution appeared on Mayor Mackay’s campaign website. What her campaign website said was that she attended college in Exeter and that she taught high school. To the casual reader (meaning most of us), it sounded like she had a four year college degree from the prestigious Exeter College that is part of Oxford University. Quite impressive academic credentials. In fairness to the Mayor, she did say in Exeter—not at Exeter. In the Mayor’s newest bio on the city’s new website she now says that attended college says near Exeter. Attended commonly means did not graduate. The college she says she attended was near Exeter and has gone out of business so we cannot check to see if she actually attended the college she now claims to have attended. Why does it matter? A graduate from Exeter College could easily handle the city’s problems. It is clear that a person who attended Seale-Hayne Agricultural College is not someone who can handle the city’s problems.
We believe that Mayor Mackay deliberately distributed biographical information which was misleading as to where she attended college. Now she has published a statement that simply can not be verified. It is not possible to determine whether she attended this agricultural school or not, or whether she graduated or not.
It should be noted that Sally Mackay was the replacement candidate for Bill Rogers whose quest to become mayor ended when he earned the moniker “uneducated white trash” Bill Rogers. It appears that Sally Mackay’s moniker should be “not as advertized” Sally Mackay. In Florida it is a crime to claim that you have an academic degree that you have not earned. The Shadow is not saying that the mayor has committed a crime. It does appear that the Mayor ran her website by the lawyers before she put it up. It does appear that she was in a calculated way deceitful in her representations to the public of her academic background.
When people claim to have graduated from a college or University they have not attended they are stealing from the good reputation of the school’s graduates.
THIS IS A PARODY
MEMBERSHIP IS OPEN TO WHITE MALE CITIZENS
OVER THE AGE OF 21
We heard Mayor Sally Mackay state on Channel 9 News (March 12, 2009, 6:00 P.M. LINK) that the problem with the Angler’s Club discrimination and its unconscionable lease is that she just learned about it and now they are going to hire an outside lawyer to advise them. They first heard about this on March 3, 2007, and we are reprinting the article below. Of course we all know that no one in the City administration reads the Shadow. Not one of the 3,300 hits last week was from any of the elected officials or their friends!
But they were confronted directly with this issue over three months ago on January 5, 2009, and then at the next City Commission meeting. The issue of discrimination was raised in a white paper on the subject and they have avoided doing anything with the hope that the issue will just go away. Two weeks ago their lawyer “baffled them with BS” and told them nothing. He never did say that the lease was valid; he said that what he chose to examine did not show it was invalid. They apparently tabled hiring an outside lawyer it seems until both the Shadow and Channel 9 showed a renewed interest. It has also been alleged that Mayor Mackay wrote a letter to the Angler’s Yacht Club before the election seeking their support and stating that she would not change their lease. We have asked her repeatedly to deny this and she will not. In sum, the Shadow thinks that she is either blind, deaf and dumb or simply pinocchio in drag.
This is the tongue-in-cheek letter-article we printed on March 3, 2007 [bracketed material is added ]:
“DEAR JOHN
As we have stated in the past, we realize that John Hagood, the City Manager, is limited in the resources available to him for pursuing cost reduction projects, so we have decided to help him out and provide draft letters for his review and forwarding to the appropriate people that might offer to help him resolve many of his problems, and free him up for important things.
March 3, 2007
Morgan B. Gilreath Jr., M.A., A.S.A., C.F.A.
Volusia County Property Appraiser
Thomas C. Kelly Administration Center
123 W. Indiana Ave
De Land FL, 32720
Dear Morgan,
Over the last several months your deputy, who is now retired, was requested [by the Shadow] to look into the failure of your office to properly assess the facilities of the Angler's Yacht Club on the North Causeway in New Smyrna Beach. It is shown on your books as a simple meeting house and a small tool shed being assessed at about $250,000. The boat shed was recently repaired for about $100,000 [permits for repairs totaled $135,000], and is probably worth more than $500,000 alone. The prime boats slips, and there appears to be about 20 of them [there are 43], are probably worth at least $150,000 each [ 2007 prices]. About 50 feet west and directly across from these slips is the City Marina for which we charge around $4,000 annually for our boat slips [Angler’s Club we are told charges its members $50 a month]. If properly assessed, this property, totally controlled and reserved for its [white male] members only should be paying more than $40,000 [at a $4,000,000 the assessment for the tax would be $80,000] a year in taxes. Both the City and County lose the benefit of this tax revenue every year.
Please reassess that property and tax them properly this coming year. We need the revenue, and other property owners are complaining about unfair taxation. [ bracket information added]
Yours truly,
John Hagood, City Manager
Administrative Office Building
120 North Causeway
New Smyrna Beach, FL 32168-9985”
BEACHWAY FOR THE MILLIONAIRS
We were trying to figure out how you obtain a permit to put trees in a public right of way. But that is what the owner adjacent to the Beachway Street access to the Inter Coastal stated she obtained before she planted three sable palms in the street . She effectively stopped fishing for folks who have been using that location, and that was before the police and Fish and Wildlife inspectors started “visiting” because Richenberg asked them to do so. They shut down an eco-tourism activity. Of course tourist and fisherman had been discouraged by the no-parking signs, the failure to have trash barrels nearby, and the landscaping that now makes it appear that it is part of the adjacent property. This is disgraceful discrimination by the rich to deny those who they think are undesirables from using a public street abutting the Intra Coastal. People who fish can not park close to where they fish and have to carry their gear and food from a greater distance. We intended to pull that permit and see who aided and abetted this property owner to discriminate. Turns out, there is no permit. We would also like to hear about the rationale for the no-parking signs.
MORE BAD DECISIONS BY THE
NSB COMMISSION DURING 2008
We know, just pick the worst ten. Unfortunately we were in a candy shop and the pressure was so great that it blew our mind. So we picked the worst ten, but just could not disregard the avalanche of additional bad decisions. Try as we may, we have finally given in and decided to print them.
So, after we put together the worst ten decisions made by the City Commissioners of New Smyrna Beach, as we said, we just could not ignore the runner ups. We really did try. But then, we decided that the next eight or ten should be set out if for no other reason than to titillate the taxpayers. Normally a small city polity that is basically dependent upon development and tourists would be run in a manner which would be unlikely to generate the opportunity for such mischief. We do not celebrate the ineptitude and disingenuousness that has given us so many. Even listing the first ten hurt. Publishing another bunch just makes us hurt more. Each represents ultimately in one way or another costs which we as taxpayers can Ill-afford. Some have suggested that we wait to list them next year, but we think we should share them now. Besides, this year they have already racked up a new list.
NUMBER 1:
Not removing from the payroll all of those City employees (nine of the senior members at the fire department) that decided to take advantage of the Deferred Retirement Options Program (DROP) whereby they not only collect their retirement into an interest bearing fund but also continue to draw their salary. Another half a million dollars. Under this program Cindy Richenberg collected an extra $48,000 before she started her $63,000 annual retirement at age 46. You can blame the City for both the phony $10,000 extra pay for being a public information officer and for not terminating her employment immediately when she retired.
NUMBER 2:
The refusal to abolish the costly 911-RCC emergency service and merge with the one run by the County. It would save a minimum it appears of $300,000 a year. But then we could find out why the calls to our local police force seem so high compared to most of our neighbors. You might even find out that there are inflated calls reported for both the police and fire department and people who live in New Smyrna Beach are not sicker by 25% than their neighbors.
NUMBER 3:
Not stopping the construction of the $10 million dollar needless police station. Fix the old one up for a million or two if you must. Look at the needless fire station where the new Station 52, the Fire Palace on 3rd Avenue, does not do one thing the old Station 52 on Columbus Avenue has done well for 30 or more years. Building the fire department a gilded palace has not increased public safety one iota. The Columbus Avenue station could have been dollied up for under $50,000.
NUMBER 4:
Failure to address the gross over management at the police department, the padding of accounts like the funds for ammunition for training, the continued purchase of police cars that are more expensive to buy and operate than those bought by almost all surrounding police departments, more zones than needed, etc. At least $ I million we figure of the bloated almost $7 million dollar police budget. Keep in mind that Deltona pays the Volusia County Sheriff’s office $91 dollars per resident and we pay ours over $300 per resident. Keep in mind too that Deltona has a lower crime rate and a higher ‘solve’ rate than New Smyrna Beach. Edgewater with the same population has a police force half the size and the Volusia County Sheriff office says it can manage with half the money and one-third the Edgewater number of employees.
NUMBER 5:
The zoning fiasco of limiting condo heights on the Beach. We never figured out whether it was the Three Stooges or the Katz and Jammer Kids who orchestrated this ordinance, but the developers hurt might sell lots of beach front property to the City for what it paid per square foot for the Esther Street property.
NUMBER 6:
The disgraceful treatment of the City taxpayers by the City Commissioners refusing to dismiss the complaints of those who moved to a nuisance, an airport, and who are now complaining about frequency of flights. Nonsense workshops and $200,000 of tax money, in this case Federal, spent as the Mayor looks for a “creative” answer. Do not worry. These malcontents will continue to be given front page center treatment by one of the free publications in town.
NUMBER 7:
Pending Dunn Lumber property purchase at corner of US 1 and SR 44. Two appraisals about $200,000 apart and the City negotiates the purchase for the higher price. Nor does anyone understand why the CRA is involved since this project, which is probably going to do little if anything to help traffic. On top of that a turn lane is a road’s issue which belongs to either the US, the County or the State. Some one please tell us how this couple of million dollar expenditure ($400,000+ for the property, ton of money for arsenic cleanup, and another pile of money for a short turn lane) will help businesses on either East or West Canal Street.
NUMBER 8;
Pouring money into the Marine Discovery Center as if that is a reasonable way to spend public money. The recent purchase of kayaks, and a $20,000 building to house them, is one of the more egregious boondoggles. It comes to mind that they could have told the MDC to arrange group rentals from any of the private concerns, like the Bike Shop, if they want to bus kids in for eco-tourism training. Those business pay taxes and add to the Community by hiring people who they pay for services. Spending public money only deprives these businesses or revenue and patronage.
DEAR SALLY
As we have stated in the past, we realize that the City Manager is limited in the resources available to him for pursuing cost reduction projects, so we have decided to help him out and provide draft letters for his review. As we have said this will free him up for important things, like dealing with all the serious problems of the police and fire department pensions.
TO: Mayor Mackay
FROM: Kahlid Resheidat, City Manager
Dear Sally,
I am having trouble figuring out how to negotiate with the Angler’s Yacht Club. They discriminate against minorities. You heard Bill Rogers on the TV Channel 9 interview. Perhaps we should ask the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department how to proceed before we find ourselves tarred with the same brush.
Moreover, it appears that they may have filed false papers with both a Federal Agency and a State Agency and that would present even more problems. You know in 2004 they got a Small Business Loan for $325,000 after the hurricane for repairs but the permits for repairs with the City it seems only totaled $135,000.
Could you please help me out with what I am suppose to say to these folks who do not want me as a member anymore than they want you.
Khalid Resheidat
