Surprise! Surprise! Surprise!
All of a sudden, after two years in office, with all his fellow Council members now turned out or resigned, Mayor J. Michael Ross is realizing something is amiss with the Town’s finances. What? All is not well? After we have been told for two years by our Mayor and Council how well things are going for the Park and Manor? The Mayor and Council couldn’t brag enough about a prestigious accounting award the Town won two years in a row. They said it was validation of the Town’s financial wellbeing. But the one-time contributor to The Voice (and now Town Councilman), Bob Massa, a CPA, told us in a column that the award was for how well the Town’s CPA presented the Town’s books, not a reflection of the soundness of Blythewood’s finances.
Rewind 15 years to when the Ballow administration, with the help of one prominent local family, concocted the idea of a multi-million dollar Blythewood Town Park and depot replica. Sixty-seven percent of the Town’s voters swept Amoth and company into office to keep the Community Center property and to prevent the multi-million dollar park and depot replica from being constructed. Moving swiftly before leaving office to seal the deal and tie the hands of the newly elected majority on Council – Mayor Pete Amoth and Councilmen Wade Dorsey and Keith Bailey – the Ballow Council hastily signed a contract with an architectural firm to design a replica of the Doko train depot for the proposed Park that would serve to replace the Community Center. But after taking office, the newly elected Council settled the bill with the architect and scrapped the train replica for less than $50,000.
The Bailey administration pulled the same stunt before the 2012 town election, signing a contract for the construction of the Manor just weeks before Ross was elected and took office. Mayor Ross was reminded that he could settle up for work done (plans, etc.) and nix the Manor. Instead, Mayor Ross and councilmen Roger Hovis and Jeff Branham hooked up with Ed Garrison and Paul Moscati to continue on the spending spree.
Now the Mayor bemoans the Town’s financial situation as complicated and hard to understand. With the advent of the Blythewood Facilities Corporation (BFC), which owns the Park, many of the Town’s liabilities were not ‘on the books.’ Concerned about the Town’s finances, I suggested the new mayor initiate a forensic audit on the Town’s books as soon as he took office. My advice was scoffed at. Governments large and small have a myriad of financial loopholes that they use to fund projects that their constituents would never approve. The BFC is just such a loophole that made possible the multi-million dollar Blythewood Town Park.
Now the idea of property taxes looms to save the Manor and Park. It’s not lost on me that political novices, who rarely attend Town meetings prior to being elected, fumble so badly. This group was warned repeatedly in the newspaper and at public meetings to proceed cautiously, that complex issues were afoot at Town Hall, issues that could catch up to us financially. We were largely ignored by the incumbents of the election two years ago. It’s ironic that two of the people who most warned of this, (councilmen Bob Massa and Tom Utroska) are now tasked with finding a way out of the financial mess our Town is in.