Curt Burt--PB County Commissioner Burt Aaronson, really needs to go. It is way past time. He's term limited but he still doesn't want to give up his throne.The City of Lake Worth has not paid the supplemental payment for Fire. See my blog of June 1 for details, so Burt wants to devise a method for making us pay it, going to any extreme to do it. He sits on his throne wondering how he can severely punish his wayward step-child for not doing it his way, never considering that perhaps he abused the kid.
Burt Aaronson has always been a little pit bull. He forgets that we are a city in financial urgency. He doesn't care about that in the slightest. "Just pay what you owe," he says. We say that we can't afford the payment and want to renegotiate the deal. He is so ticked off that we are not paying this supplemental payment that he wants to withhold money from the Bond to redevelop our beach. The Lake Worth beach is used by everyone, maybe even Burt, not just Lake Worth taxpayers who are the only ones who pay to maintain it and pay for the lifeguards. The taxpayers of Lake Worth have been paying on the Bond for years. The County's legal department will look into Aaronson's request but right now the consensus is that the County can not withhold money from the Bond.
PB County took advantage of Lake Worth from inception and on most every deal we have ever entered with them. You don't go around charging supplements to a poor city when not one other municipality has paid one. A past commission allowed this to happen based on bad advice from staff. At every turn, Clemens and Lowe wanted to give away Lake Worth. It ended up a political decision that never should have happened. Cara Jennings even voted wrong. Even our fire chief did not stand up for the city and went with the flow as his men would make more money, He said that the City would save; it didn't. It's always about the money. The City was promised a savings that it never got; the taxpayers have paid more in taxes ever since and the firemen, well, they just made more money.
The City bought the line that it was going to cost them to take our employees so they demanded and got a supplemental payment every year. We never had staff negotiate one thing. We have been paying it until this year when the City declared Financial Urgency with an expected budget shortfall of $4.6 million. Next year that supplement payment will be at $1,300,000 every year for the life of the deal and that's over and above what we pay them on our tax bill.
The Firefighters support Tom Ramicico and you have to ask yourself, "Why?" On November 21, 2000 ,when Tom Ramiccio was mayor of Lake Worth, he voted to give the firefighters a $350,000 raise. The Unions are not sheep; they are more like elephants and they do not forget who is looking out for their special interests.Remember that when you vote on July 12.
......Burt Aaronson has always been a little pit bull. He forgets that we are a city in financial urgency.....
ReplyDeleteLynn,
You state that the city is in a state of financial urgency. If that is the case, is their a forensic audit proving that statement? If not, then why has the City Manager permitted this to go forward without such an audit?
LW now appears to be acting like a spoiled child who is not wanting to live up to its contractual obligations, and PB County is completely justified in their stance if there is no overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
Bottom Line: Produce a forensic audit and the PB Commissioners may be willing to assist LW in finding ways to reduce its debt burden.
We just had our External Audit completed and spent plenty on that.
ReplyDeleteLW is not acting like a spoiled child but even if it were that, Burt as father, should not be punishing a city so severely. We just negotiated with the County earlier on the water contract and ended up saving $3.5 million dollars. We have negotiated the PBSO contract and we will do the same with any contract that is not in our best interests.
We have auditors at city hall now looking into the deadbeat cities that have refused to pay us what they owe on the sewer. Why do you feel that the City has to prove everything to negotiate a bad contract and to save millions of dollars going forward?
Stanton is doing the right thing.
.......Why do you feel that the City has to prove everything to negotiate a bad contract and to save millions of dollars going forward?.........
ReplyDeleteIts not a matter of feeling anything. The city is in default when it does not pay its contractual obligations and is therefore subject to fraud charges if it can be proven that the city was financially able to pay for the contract as stated. A forensic audit would go a long way toward assisting the city in proving that it is indeed a 'city in financial urgency'. Without an audit, a judge will have no choice but to rule against LW.
This has little to do with renegotiating a bad contract. However, it has much to do about contractual obligations and if those obligations were ever intended to be met.
Are you a lawyer? Are you a Judge? Or are you just guessing and bringing down a Stanton decision?
ReplyDeleteNope, neither an attorney nor a judge. Simply a business person with a vast amount of experience with deadbeat organizations (Lake Worth?) and individuals, and the litigation which followed.
ReplyDeleteLake Worth is a city trying to rise from the ashes while others try desperately to keep us down. It will not happen. We are moving forward and entering into decent contracts that will benefit this city.
ReplyDeleteI thought I had said that we got out of the water contract with the County--another BAD deal wherein we stopped paying. They negotiated and we won in the end.
So, I take offense at your assessment and the use of the word "deadbeat." We are proud of our city and everything that has been accomplished since Susan Stanton became our city manager. She is, so far, a tough negotiator and serving us well.
Who exactly is trying to "desperately keep (LW) down"?
ReplyDeleteBecause citizens have a different point of view than this blog does, as to how the city really can rise from the ashes, does not mean that these citizens are all evil and worship the devil....do you really think that there is some secret plot to bring LW to it's knees?
Obviously there are different points of view on how the city is served best - but to say that a group has the sole intention of annihilating the town of LW is really drama at it's best.
Burt Aaronson is a shameless bully. Like Tom Ramiccio, Aaronson is all about what's in it for him. He,like Ramiccio could care less about the taxpayers.When politicians make decisions based on what's in it for them,and to heck with the taxpayers,you get a city that is in the position that Lake Worth is slowly beginning to recover from.Clemens, Vespo and Lowe kicked the taxpayers of Lake Worth in the nuts so many times, we may never recover! Lowe,that ignorant waste of a human body, bodily GRABBED the Greater Bay contract out of the hands of then Mayor Mark Drautz. She signed this absolute piece of garbage without even reading it! Lowe is responsible for the 40 million dollar shakedown of our city by Greater Bay(a company so wrong in so many ways that it can't fit here).Fire up the grill for another hot dog Retha.
ReplyDeleteI am confused. I did not know one Commissioner had all the power over the other people on the daiz. I think I hear a little bit of jealousy here regarding Mrs. Lowe. How can anyone know if she read the contract or not and isn't that the Commission now says we have staff and lawyers for. Something doesn't smell right here.
ReplyDeleteYou would have had to been involved then. Point is, she is the one who got us in this trouble. Who in heck would be jealous of Retha Lowe who was lead by the nose by Loretta Sharpe, who took the nod from Vespo on everything she ever did. That is exactly the point. That commission was terrible right along with staff and it NEVER passed the smell test. Fire up the grill, Retha. Ask Bo Allen about his despicable behavior that night.
ReplyDelete