Last month, the South Lake Tahoe City Council boasted that it is going to spend $4 million a year on roads for the next five years. Unfor tunately, that $4 million promise, which is probably only half of what needs to be spent to do the job properly, is just an empty promise that history tells us will soon be forgotten.
The reality is that the City Council has not only enough money to fix our roads — history also tells us there has been a clear pattern and practice of raiding funds from road re pairs and maintenance in or der to prop up redevelopment failures and to reward special interest groups. These actions have been going on for 15 years and it has resulted in an astronomical unfunded liability of somewhere between $150-250 million in crumbling roads, broken drain age pipes and dangerous pot holes. The only success in this area has been for a few individuals who re ward their supporters with money and favors, so they can continue to get themselves re-elected to office.
Jim Marino, an engineer with the city, told the council in 2009 that it would take $5.2 million a year for 25 to 30 years, just to get the streets back up to par. The City Council responded by doing nothing, resulting in more unfunded liabilities as well as ever more runoff polluting our beaches and creating further loss of lake clarity. Meanwhile, the city budget does not even recognize these unfunded liabilities.
On May 31, I sent a letter to the South Lake Ta hoe City Attorney, Patrick Enright, to inform him that I had discovered that sometime around 2002, someone transferred about $7 million from the general fund, without the knowledge or consent of the City Council. I explained that my research had indicated that those funds were deposited to the Redevel opment Agency, again without the knowledge or con sent of the City Council. I then told the city attorney that it appears the purpose of this raid on the general fund was to cover the financial failures of the Redevelopment Agency and the Park Avenue development.
To my astonishment, the city attorney sent me a “loan agreement,” dated March 16, 2004, which was about two years after the unauthorized transfer of the $7 million. This agreement, signed by then-May or Tom Davis, asserts that the $7,007,000 is a “loan” and that it is to be paid back with TOT funds. Since the TOT funds had already been allocated to the general fund, I could not understand how such a loan could be legal. It also struck me as suspicious that the city attorney would proffer a backdated document, especially since the El Dorado Grand Jury had previously admonished the City Council about backdated documents.
It's now been more than five years since the $400-plus-million convention center-retail-hotel complex broke ground. It is now a crumbling pile of concrete, rust and graffiti. Not only has the current City Council failed to address this problem, it appointed the guy responsible for this crater as our new mayor.
The real reason that this 12-acre crater can't be fixed is because the city never required a performance bond. In fact, then-Mayor Hal Cole, who also served as the Redevelopment Agency board chairman, not only let the developer off the hook for the performance bond, Mr. Cole signed the contract first, even though the contract specified the developer must sign first. Why Mr. Cole suspended the performance bond and signed first remains a mystery and is a matter that should still be investigated by the Grand Jury.
Worst of all, on July 10, 2006, Mayor Hal Cole told the public, “The developer is assuming all the risk.”
Given that the city ended up with an enormous crater and no funds to fix it, Mayor Cole's comment was not only false and deceptive, his re-appointment as mayor has created an unacceptable level of mistrust in our City Council.
As a result of these and other disturbing findings of financial wrongdoing, the reckless accumulation of monstrous unfunded liabilities, the disgraceful pollution of our beaches and lake, as well as the on going deception of the public about our crumbling roads, I have filed a formal complaint with the El Dorado County Grand Jury. After 15 years of shameful failures and abuses, it is time to either hold the city council legally responsible for its dishonest and incompetent performance or dissolve this costly and corrupt pretense of a city government.
— Steve Kubby is a South Lake Tahoe resident.
http://www.tahoedailytribune.com/article/20110718/NEWS/110719890/1059&parentprofile=1059
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