Where's the Money!!

Well, it was another one of those all-nighters with little to no sleep.  Happens every time I go to a City Council meeting or even worse when I go sit thru a Planning and Zoning meeting.  Last evening was not all too painful.  We now have a law that makes it illegal to park your camper overnight in a place that is not designed and zoned for campers. 

The new bridge was a topic of discussion also. The city engineers and police are going to have fun for a while trying to move traffic from the new bridge through to their destination on roads not designed to handle the crowd.  All in all they seem to have a good handle on the problem.  And it is a good problem to have, since it means we will soon have two bridges across the big creek that separates us from the City of Hollister and most of the rest of Taney County.

The Convention Center gave a very good report to the City regarding it's ability to control spending and reduce the deficit it was anticipated to have this last quarter and for this year overall.  Convention dollars are flowing thru to the other parts of the city also.  Nice job Hilton. 

Once again (I think the third or fourth time) the city elected not to answer the simple question Darin Codon has been asking.  Not sure what the problem is.  I guess it really does not bother me that they evade the answer to his question, they seem to want him to put everything in very succinct written question form.  Seems other people can ask a question and at least get an attempt to an answer, but this young man does not warrant that courtesy.  What did cause me to spend the rest of the night awake and vacillating from perturbed to down right angry was the fact that the aldermen didn't seem to wonder about the answer to his question either.

Now, I ask you. If handed a pretty chart that shows expenditure of the past few years and one of the 12 or 15 colored bars is four times larger than the others that correspond to the same date in other years, would you not want to know what EXACTLY caused that multimillion dollar change?  I sit or have sat on quite a few boards that utilize annual budgets and have fancy book keeping methods of reporting to the board members.  I have had instances whereby unusual figures or graph sections stand out and I can assure you, I was not the only one on the board that questioned this phenomenon.  The expenditure in question are labeled "Brd/City Admin" and for some reason 2008 is about $4,000,000 while 2009 and 2010 is about $1,000,000. There is an asterisk with a footnote that explains that in "2008 - Board/City Admin - includes lump sum paid to Convention Center"

Mr. Codon asked what the lump sum amount was and I think he also was in effect asking WHY.

My anger is based on a more important question.  Why was not one alderperson asking for the answer also?

I don't know what this lump sum expenditure consists of.  I don't know what it paid for.  BUT, I do know our city council should be able to answer the question asked of them.  OK, maybe not the first time he asked it, after all it was only a 400% variance from the norm and it was a 3 year old number.  Why on earth would you not have the answer available when the question was asked the second or even the third time?  It sure does bring a parcel of questions to mind.

Is the "lump sum" used as the excuse really a large amount or is there other lump sums not disclosed?

What other expenditures caused the massive total? OR was the full $3,000,000 overage caused solely by the Convention Center?

Why is an expenditure noted as being for the Convention Center levied against a department known as Administration, surely a capitol improvement of this nature has it's one line item in the books or the benefits would be parceled out to the various departments affected?

Who got this huge windfall of money that mysteriously got spent by the Admin department on a convention center that was fully financed and funded by bonds.  Why did it come from City coffers directly rather than the bonds created to pay for that venture?

And so many more questions could come to mind.

Yet, the sole answer to the cause of a single expenditure column on the chart was

        " * 2008 - Board/City Admin - includes lump sum paid to Convention Center"

and no expansion of that notation seems to be forthcoming.

I do so hope that the city aldermen have already asked those questions and had sufficient answers to enlighten them.  I do so hope at least one of those, ever so important, people has bothered to learn the cause of $3,000,000 of this city's hard earned money being handed of to some unknown person or company.

If so, could one of you please bother to answer the question he has asked over and over again?

If not, don't you think it might just be a valid question?