Concerned Citizen Speaks Out
I write this article as a concerned citizen. I have contemplated for a long time about writing this article as I know it will have repercussions and possibly have a negative reaction on my businesses.
My wife asked me not to and stay ouat of it. But that is how Marlin got where it is now. Citizens gripe and complain, go on social media and complain, but in the end do nothing. I am writing this to inform citizens of concerns so everyone can make an educated decision to initiate and demand immediate change so we don’t continue to spiral downward.
First, My concern is with our current administration. I have sat back and watched, listened, and have come to the conclusion that our current administration has failed the citizens of Marlin.
We have a city manager that has no clue what he is doing and acts like he is a puppet to the mayor. She tries to control the city manager and council by acting like a bulldog, inflicting fear and not allowing any other opinions.
The Mayor speaks of “transparency,” but her actions are just the opposite. She only puts out exactly what she wants you to hear. I have attended city council meetings and watched the City Manager and Mayor basically give just enough information to persuade the council to vote her way, but if they had all the correct data they may have not decided that way. I have heard this in quotes from several council members.
Second, the Mayor campaigned on several things like lowering water bills yet she and council raised the water bill Oct. 1 and stated at the public forum that is was due to a prior council decision and was needed for the new large grant we were approved for so she had no choice but to raise.
I met with the City Manager the next day to inform him that the prior council approval had nothing to do with the large grant that was applied for and that the council all agreed to reverse that ordinance. The City Manager agreed and tried to tell me that the Mayor did not say that and after some conversation then he agreed that I was correct and that it did not affect the loan if they reversed the ordinance, yet they then allowed the raise to happen.
Third, the other item she promised was she would find the missing money.
Well, the issue is we have a Mayor that is very misinformed on any history of our city and unfortunately we have a City Manager that is new to the city so is also uninformed of the history of the city. Yet, when she takes office she makes a decision of whom she wants to keep and whom she wants to go.
One of the first to go is the city secretary, which has been with the city for over 20 years and handled all of our grants, HR, city secretary duties and prior finance department. She is the only one in the city that knows where everything is and status of grants and where all documents are that may be needed.
So, the Mayor thinks she can do it all.
Fourth, next to go is our public works director saying that he cannot work with someone that does not respect their job and wants to run a dictatorship.
Fifth, next our water plant manager steps down as plant manager.
Sixth, our finance director gives her two-week notice as they had been bullying her, blaming her for work that she did not do. Making her put together a budget so if there is an issue; they would have a fall guy. The full responsibility of putting together a budget for a municipality belongs to the City Manager and department heads.
In one meeting the finance director tried to explain a part of the budget, which the Mayor just could not understand what the finance director was saying and aggressively says, “so you messed up our budget.”
Seventh, she then fires the city attorney that has been our city attorney for over 20 years and has always provided good service and wrote almost all our ordinances. They then hire a new city attorney who has only been licensed for a few years and has never represented a city and has no city law experience.
Under her representation the Mayor and City Council have violated multiple local charter and State laws, which I will go into detail further in the article.
Eighth, there have been many other issues in the last year. The first really bad decision was the Mayor and City Manager decided to hold a press conference and state on all the local news media that there was missing money and used the finance director in those actions without first doing any research before making accusations.
The auditor was here on a Wednesday afternoon for normal audit corrections and between Wednesday afternoon and early Friday morning they sent the finance director a notice to not come in and announced there was going to be a forensic audit done. Well, how did you do any research in that period of time before just jumping out there and making those kinds of statements, which will probably lead to a lawsuit for dragging the finance director into the press release? Then the Mayor uses the press release to get the council to approve to spend a $10,000 retainer to hire a firm to do a forensic audit.
The Mayor and City Manager then make the decision to only audit one year. What is one year going to accomplish? Nothing! If you are going to truly do a forensic audit to track missing money or fraud do at least three, five or 10 years. This one year probably cost the taxpayers $25-40,000 (I have requested the amount from the city).
In a council meeting the normal auditor was asked how much money was missing. He stated that he did not know, and never said there was any money missing. Then he was asked if there were millions missing would he not know. He stated if there were that much money missing he would be able to see it in our finances. Well, after almost five months they finally present the forensic audit to council stating that the records where bad and that they could not determine if there was money missing. Excuse me, if there were millions missing like the Mayor and City Manager said five months earlier then how could a forensic auditor that specializes in fraud detection charging tens of thousands of dollars not find it.
Well, the answer is our Mayor and City Manager did not provide all the documentation that was needed for the auditor to be successful. Example: they said there was no “Proper Grant
Tracking and Status of the Grants.” This is a falsehood.
They then said there were no proper controls on how money is controlled or approved. This too is false. This is an issue because the Mayor and City Manager are clueless and unwilling to reach out and ask for help from anyone even though they have been offered help.
First, they did not turn in the 10-year grant tracking report that shows all grants and loans since 2008 till end of 2018. It shows all open and closed grants, what we bought with them, how much and what was current status. There was also an excel worksheet that showed all current and open loans, what their annual payments were, and payment schedule since some of our loans increase every few years.
The auditor could have used this information. Second, the city has a purchasing policy that requires a purchase order to be signed off by two people, approved by finance director and then two signatures on the check before it could be purchased or paid. Due to arrogance and not willing to try to use all resources and rushing to run people off you are left ignorant and unable to run the city.
Ninth, the Mayor then rushes to tell the citizens that the report shows that there are $2 million unexplained in an account that the city was unaware. First, the city was aware of all the accounts, but because of your poor prior decisions you where not aware of the city’s finances.
I had to go to a council meeting to inform them of bank accounts with money in them that the city had. Well, since neither the City Manager or Mayor was willing to do any research, as a concerned citizen I called the bank to find out that the $2 million was the bank’s money that they had pledged on behalf of the city to securitize the cities money. Any bank that hold accounts for public funds are not protected by the FDIC and the bank has to put up matching funds to protect the public. But, instead she erroneously states that there is grant money missing while the report stated nothing about it.
Why was the report accepted by the council before all bank accounts and reports where turned into the auditor blows my mind.
One of my concerns is while speaking to several members of the council I Iearned that until this month the council has not received a full explainable finance report from the finance department. So who is monitoring the finances of the city other then the two top leaders that don’t know how to create or even read a budget? The first excuse they gave was they where waiting for the forensic audit to be completed.
Explain to me what the forensic audit of 2017-18 have to do with the current finance report. Well I finally got the correct answer. The new finance director does not know how to use our city accounting software Encode. She is taking her classes to learn. But wait – we went cheap and saved some money though, in spite of not providing the council (your representatives) with the accurate information to make decisions. I have requested the same report that I use to see when I was in office.
My concern is that in mid-May 2019 the last finance report that I saw I left the city with over
$600,000 in reserves, which was more money then the city had in reserves in the last 10 years.
Yes, I have a report to prove it as it is not made up.
I have been watching the city spend money like it grows on trees. I can respect the work at the city park but if we can’t get to the park what good is it. There has not been any roadwork done since Mayor and City Manager have been in their positions. I have not seen but maybe one load of asphalt purchased this year and I believe that was donated by a citizen along with a street roller that has never left the yard.
We have a Dura Patcher that has not left the yard in 2020. They have not purchased near the amount of gravel or oil to even run the street machine. Their best efforts is to put gravel or what I have been seeing now is to put in dry recycled asphalt because they get it free from TxDOT. If used with an oil mixture this would be like using asphalt but no, let’s put dirt and let it wash away and fill our drainage system so we continue to flood our streets.
What really upsets me is that they are tearing up streets all over the city and not even repairing them but how can you if you have no asphalt to even do that. They tore up huge line on Gift Street, Country Club Drive and many more but just leave it so we can waste the money somewhere else. But we have a useless $30-$40,000 audit and Economic Development Company that we paid $20,000 to that has not produced anything, except after four months they are ready to do a citizens survey which was already done in 2019.
Let’s now go into the new Marlin ISD and the $10,000 consultant that she pushed to hire to write an application to be a charter school. Did he ever even write the application, and did it ever get turned in or did we just waste another $10,000? State law provides for legal entities to take care of the state, county and cities.
The school district has a board to take care of their business. The city has a council to take care of theirs. Supporting the school is admirable but let’s take care of what the council is elected to do first.
Marlin has a long history of wasted money and bad decisions. That is how we got where we are now. This administration is one of the worse I have seen so far. It has been proven that we do not have a City Manager or a Mayor that is willing to learn as they keep violating our charter and state laws.
Some of the violations are a result of pushing out the only ones that knew where everything was, our city secretary, finance director, city attorney, and not willing to work with any prior administrations to educate themselves of past actions and important actions that would be helpful for her administration going forward.
Then they break an employment opportunity rule and don’t post the position for city secretary externally or internally and just give it to an employee that has only been a city secretary in a much smaller city then Marlin but also give her basically the same salary as the one with over 20 year’s experience.
The City Manager and Mayor make that decision and never take it to the council for approval, which is required by our City Charter. So legally since the Council has not approved and the City Manager and Mayor have paid her they are in violation of our City Charter and that is Misappropriation of Public Funds, which could be charged as a Felony in Texas.
They also allow her to sign legal documents on behalf of the city, which could put the city
at risk if anyone ever challenges her position.
The next violation was Aug. 26 when the Mayor called an emergency meeting so the council could appoint the City Manager as Interim Police Chief. The violation is this does not fall under the guidelines of state law for emergency meetings. In addition the City Manager is already in charge of the police department as his duties and charter state. The prior police chief died on
Aug. 23. If it was such a public safety issue why there was not an emergency meeting called the next day. They then had another meeting on Aug. 29 and 30 with a regular called meeting on Sept. 10 so there were plenty of other meetings to appoint him to a position that he already had.
The next violation was Aug. 29 in which they went into executive session to discuss new city attorney contract, lawn service contract and forensic audit, which none of these are employees and not allowed in executive session which is an open meeting act violation.
The next violation occured on Aug. 30, 2019, when the Mayor calls an emergency meeting to approve the budget to meet the budget deadline. They had already met on Aug. 6, 13,
26, and 29. The inability of elected officials to function in a timely manner does not constitute an emergency per 551.045. They also tabled the public hearing for Property and Sales Tax.
Next Violation is Sept. 17, 2019, the Mayor presents to the council and is approved by council the 2019-20 property and sales tax rates which required by our City Charter and state law to be presented to council two times and city has to hold two public hearings for the public to hear and have the right to oppose. They tabled the first hearing and did not hold a second hearing or present to council which is a violation of our city charter and a violation of state law.
In January 2020 the Mayor then decide to create a charter school and decided to hold a closed door meeting to discuss a contract with D.R. Nelson in executive session. The issue is that D.R.
Nelson was a contractor not an employee, which means it is an open meeting act violation to discuss that in private as the citizens have the right to hear the details of the contract.
On March 10, 2020, the Mayor called yet another executive closed door meeting to discuss the Brushy Creek Contractors contract which is yet another State Violation of the open meetings act.
I must ask what is in these contracts that the Mayor and City Manager don’t want the citizens to know. Where is all the transparency she promised?
I was informed that our large grant did not close back in December like it was scheduled to. It does not help when the Mayor and City Manager make a press release that there are millions of possible grant money missing.
I was told from someone in Austin that those concerns could be one reason why the money has not been received yet. There has been no evidence to show any money missing other then a few checks that total little over $3,000 where paid twice which was done by accident and we can recover the money from the vendor.
This administration is all about look at what I did: parks, found the missing money that was not missing, achieved spending tens of thousands of dollars to do a forensic audit for one year. This administration has done nothing to advance us. No major grants have been applied for to help fix the city. We got a great deal on some old army trucks and some golf carts and fixed our parks.
The ignorance, selfishness and arrogance cannot be overlooked nor accepted.
I have reached out to our District Attorney and encouraged her to review all of the laws that have been violated and misappropriation of public funds, she said she would and may request assistance from the Texas Attorney General’s Office to assist.
I challenge all concerned citizens demand the Mayor and City Manager to resign from their positions as they are not qualified to hold and stop deceiving citizens and wasting our money. Under this leadership the citizens of Marlin will suffer.
Concerned Citizen,
John Keefer
Marlin, Texas
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