|
|
 |
 |
Things That Make You Say Hmmmmm.
On April 21st, we received an email from County Commissioner Tom Keigher. This is the content of the email.
"you may find these several stats interesting. tom k."
Below this message were several links and we have to be honest, no one here gave it much thought. Then, later in the day we received this email from Gastonia City Manager, Jim Palenick.
"I am appalled at the lack of professional courtesy or consideration that goes into beginning such an e-mail stream, and the suspect motives behind it. As well, the fact that same would be forwarded on to virtually every Business, professional, and elected leader in Gaston County……
Because I personally respect the list of e-mail recipients, I think you may wish to further consider the following:
The 6-years I spent as City Manager of Bay City was working for a primarily-business-oriented, (primarily-Republican) Reform-minded City Commission who Provided me Direction on What they hoped to achieve, and consistently voted (unanimously) for the projects and initiatives undertaken during that era. Such “era” represented only 4-5 actual years of dominance by this group in what has otherwise been an unbroken, absolute, machine-like dominance by Labor Unions dominated by the local Democratic Party, for over 100 years. It has been nearly 9 years since I was employed by the City of Bay City, and when I left (2002), the City was spending 54% of its personnel costs on people who didn’t work for the City (retirees with absurdly-rich pension and health care benefits), and only 46% of its personnel costs on existing employees. There are few places on earth more dominated by labor unions and their influence then Bay City, Michigan; and I was, in fact relieved of my position by those same influences, who saw my leadership as negative to their aims (for which I was, and remain justifiably proud).
I would encourage you to ponder what might have been the motive(s) for sending/sharing this spurious e-mail and its inherent innuendo.
Thank You,
Jim Palenick
Gastonia City Manager"
Do not think for a minute that this didn't get our attention. We immediately went back to Tom Keigher's email and looked at the links. It is there that we found what the County Commissioner was referring to. One of the first links was this one, The 35 Most Troubled Cities in America.
If you click on the link you will see that the number one most troubled city in America according to the Moody's and msnbc.com adversity index was Bay City, MI. We realized the connection immediately as we have been vocal critics that Mr. Palenick has implemented some of the same failed policies in Gastonia as he did in Bay City before getting fired.
What really peaked our interest however, was that a County Commissioner was so observant, bold, and distributed this email to 168 other people. The list of recipients was a virtual who's who in Gaston County municipal government and business. Without a further explanation from Commissioner Keigher we have no idea how to interpret his intentions but the message seems to be clear. Is this his way of vocalizing his disapproval of the job that is being done by the Gastonia City Manager?
If we do not know the intent of Commissioner Keigher's message we certainly know the response from Mr. Palenick. Through his own words we see he is not a fan of unions, the Democratic Party, pensions, or health benefits. At least not in Bay City. This does not bode well for city employees in Gastonia. It is easy to understand why some of the City Departments were so upset when he led the charge to change health benefits in Gastonia.
After reading this article we were quickly reminded of similarities between Bay City and Gastonia and the projects that have been over seen by Mr. Palenick.
In Bay City, money was transferred from the P.O.W.E.R. Fund (similar to Gastonia's Electric Fund) to be used as "seed" money for new development. The first project was a Hereford and Hops Restaurant. $700,000.00 was was used for the development that soon went bankrupt and the money was never repaid to the fund. The depleted fund resulted in electric rates being increased for Bay City residents.
In Gastonia, a private restaurant was given $700,000.00 (ironically the exact same amount as was given in Bay City) in grant money by the city. Although the money was not taken from the Electric Fund, over the years millions have been removed from Gastoni'a Electric Fund to cover other areas of the budget and of course we have learned that now Gastonia faces higher electric rates for years to come. If the restaurant in Gastonia goes bankrupt the city will be out $700,000.00
In Bay City, a hotel and conference center were built. Upon completion, at least one privately owned hotel was forced to close because it could not compete with the joint venture the city had built. Upon it's closure it owed a substantial amount in taxes to Bay City that have have never been paid. The conference center has defaulted on payments it owes to the city and as of last year was in a dispute and had not paid it's own taxes. This amounts to huge losses of revenue by the city. The complex continues to be a burden on the Bay City finances.
In Gastonia, the conference center currently being built was to be paid for by Hotel Occupancy Taxes (H.O.T.). In his presentation to the Gastonia City Council, Mr. Palenick said that very conservative figures for the tax revenue were used and that they included a zero increase in future occupancy to make sure the expenses would be covered. Subsequently, hotel occupancy in Gastonia was negative from the previous year so according to Mr. Palenick's argument, the city was already losing money before the ground was broken. If this trend continues, which it could for several years, the city will
have to cover the shortage for the conference center and this will come out of the taxpayer's pocket.
There are several more similarities we have found but we think we (and probably you) are beginning to understand what was meant by the very short message sent by Mr. Keigher. It appears there is trouble ahead for Gastonia and it's budget and people are finally waking up to that fact.
If either Mr. Keigher or Mr. Palenick would like to clarify or dispute any of our findings or our interpretation of what was written in the emails we welcome any and all correspondence.
|
 |
| |
|  |
|
|
