Comment Up
There has been much said of late about a "former Lake Worth Commission" that went through our Reserves
(our savings) to the tune of $8 to $12 million dollars. Commissioner John Szerdi mentioned it in the very first political speech he gave after being sworn in. The Lake Worth Herald continues to mention Reserves and writes that Suzanne Mulvehill gave praise in her final speech to those "who nearly bankrupted the city" and that "we don't need them in office ever again."
We concur. We don't need them nor do we want them in office. This was all during the Paul Boyer and Bob Baldwin regimes. The people who were in power then and the biggest culprits to this were Jeff Clemens, Dave Vespo and Retha Lowe. They had the majority vote and it was they who either allowed the then city managers to dip heavily into reserves and/or voted Reserves away. During Vespo's term, $60 million in Consent Agenda items were approved. We expect politicians to twist or eliminate facts to their advantage (that is why most are held in low esteem and honest ones are subject to
annihilation--think Allen West) but we don't expect that of the Press. Over the last four years, however, we have witnessed a biased press.
It is unfortunate that neither one (Commissioner Szerdi or the Lake Worth Herald) identified the commission that was in power at the time reserves were squandered. The reason? Some of them, to this day, are their friends. By leaving out that important information, it is meant for the listener or reader to jump to false conclusions and blame their political enemies, Cara Jennings and Suzanne Mulvehill.
Mulvehill was elected well after the money was allocated and the Budget set. Soon after, Susan Stanton was hired in April 2009. At that time she stopped the bleed and the robbing of Reserves. Past managers did not take the proper measures and did not address the imbalance between the estimated cost of city services and the projected revenue needed to pay for those services.
We all became aware of the city depleting Reserves in 2006. The City's failure to address this fundamental problem and not implement long term solutions, nearly depleted the unreserved general fund balance. Three years later, Stanton had us headed towards a healthier Lake Worth when she ended the robbing of our Reserves. She was fired because she was a tough administrator, not because she failed at her job. When you make the hard decisions, you get a lot of folks angry, the Unions for one.
Even though these problems were pointed out over and over again, that commission majority voted to keep one ineffectual manager in place and our money kept disappearing. Retha even said, "I
like him." He finally left after finding a job closer to his residence.
