Recall the Mayor?.

Let's look at the real issues facing the city.

We have a shockingly high vacancy rate. It's not just the new condos. According to the 2010 Census, 26% of our housing units are vacant, 10% higher than the rest of the county, and that is pretty evenly distributed among condos and single family houses. It's not getting better.

Mayor Corina Esquijarosa's attempt to get a foreclosure registry on the books was stonewalled by Connie and Eddie Lim-Kreps.

The budget is shot. The city manager's refusal to consider personnel adjustments and the police chief's ongoing legal investigations into routine personnel matters have meant that even with the millage increase, we're out of money. It's going to get worse next year. Yet the commission has been unable to get a clear financial picture from the city.

Connie Lim-Kreps and Bob Pushkin were signing checks in clear violation of the charter. The Vice's defense was "Yeah. Well, Bob Pushkin told me to do it." What were these checks? We don't know and the city manager won't tell us. But our money got spent.

Benefits continue to flow to the politically connected. The city is paying for both Dr. and Mrs. Vogel's cell phones. Former Police Chief Robert Daniels took $5000 from the Law Enforcement Trust Fund to attend a swanky dinner at the Seven Island Chief's dinner. His benefits alone would fund two police officers. The city's largest tax debtor at nearly $500,000 in arrears sits on the Budget Oversight Commission deciding what tax rates we should pay. The list goes on.

The commission meetings are like the Jerry Springer show, without the intellectual content. Not only do the Lim-Kreps twins allow speakers to defame and intimidate any citizens who are not in the CFD power clique, they actively encourage it.

The Waste Management contract was passed when the city manager stated that the savings would be $500,000 per year, not the real figure of around $80,000 (It's on the 9/28/2010 DVD, Scene 3 at about 16 minutes in) and if it finally makes it through, will eliminate side yard pickup, while our taxes go up.

These and other issues are ones that Corina Esquijarosa has tried rationally and strongly to address. Esquijarosa's not a shrill woman, given to hyperbole or personal attacks, so maybe you haven't seen it. For her efforts, she is being smeared, attacked at work, dismissed as idiotic by Eddie Lim-Kreps at the last meeting, and now the subject of a recall by the vice president of a group that regularly engages in slander, intimidation and obscene communications. (I have the emails.)

Now, the unelected Vice Mayor and the group who put her in there on your tax dollars (she won a lawsuit, not an election) demand to recall the mayor we elected six months ago. They want to put the city in the hands of the same unelected Connie Lim-Kreps, a woman proud of her ignorance, her twin Eddie Lim-Kreps, and let them continue their campaign of transferring your money to private hands. How is that a good idea?

Kevin Vericker
June 9, 2011