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Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Current Watch: City of Glenwood Springs City Council "Spell it out"

This post is brought by 'gws44' on behalf of 'smalltown7'.

Buzz, spin, twisted play on words to meet individual spin machine goals brings to our attention continued complaints re: our lack of clarity.

'What do they want?'

Let's go over what remains  to be answered by council:

1.  Never once has the public been made aware of the results of a forensic audit (not the calculator tape run from 2005) on the funds feeding into the tourism marketing contract. Yet, years upon years worth of concerns and discrepancies have been not only voiced by the public, those concerns show up in dozens of city council meeting minutes and taped video recordings of council meetings.

Request:   Publically disclose all the results, from all audits, including forensic strength from third party, on all funds feeding into the tourism marketing contract since it's inception.

2.   It's public record the battle that took 14 years minimum to get done with Ordinance #12 Series of 2010.  Now that it's here, there are 3 sitting chamber directors on the new tourism board.  The secretary taking minutes is a chamber employee.  The chamber's CEO sits meetings at her discretion and the board's.  That makes 5 out of 11 people present who have a vested interest in the accommodations tax.  As defined by the city attorney in a recent council meeting:   "Jan Shute explained the Conflict of Interest statute deals with not only financial interests, but whether there is an interest that would cause a person not to make an objective decision. That’s a personal decision question."

With all the public record history of the tug-of-war with the chamber over the marketing contract for the past 14 years (or more) and the ethical propriety concerns of a non-profit in a position of trust repeatedly skating under the public eye radar on serious allegations; the new tourism board should hold only one chamber representative seat.

The issue of abysmal performance for 3 years and refusal to publically disclose answers to legitimate public questions, such as Strawberry Days has severely undermined the trust needed for someone in a position to hold one of the most important marketing functions we have.

Request:  This is a public RFP that nowhere on city website does it state fair and equitable coverage of inside information to all bidders. 

There are very clear statutes in place regarding conflicts of interest. 

Disqualify the chamber's current bid until all questions over forensic auditing, current investigations, current contract performance and Strawberry Days contractual arrangements are publically answered.

3.  Ethical propriety.  Publically taped evasion by council to address ethical propriety and public unrest has now been ongoing for over two years.  With the ending now confirmed as legal liability for the city and others.

Request:  The city needs to publically address exactly why we have been put in this position. 

Then stay on top of every concern in a public, forthcoming manner until all matters are cleaned up. 

The city needs to issue city controlled, not local reporter controlled press releases that publically clear up the entire decades old problem that have created all ethical impropriety.

smalltown7 keeps talking.

7 comments:

mack said...

Heard that. couldn't be clearer what's being said. You would think there would be some concern for the publicity of small having to get vocal just to get the job done. Google it and safe is everywhere. Wouldn't it be great to have city councilman in place who cared enough about us to clean up the mess once and for all? Get the new promo contract off to a good start? Instead we're still stuck with the scandal from a dark place and enough unanswered money questions to make anybody wonder when they visit Glenwood Springs.

legalkiwi said...

I'd say it was a concern bringing the ability to not make an objective decision that GSCRA has their head employee on public record and plastered at her own hand all over the internet posing as a whole bunch of characters. Talk about a personnel problem, that's got to take the cake. I'd say that a financial interest exists when 1/4 million bucks a year has been gleaned off for so-called expenses when some of those line item expenses are bogus. Like rent on a building that's donated free from the county. $70,000 a year to maintain a visitors center that is supposed to be a function of the chamber of commerce membership?? Wonder what all the chambers of commerce in the USA have to say about that. Each one funds their own visitors center.
Conflict of interest? At the very minimum.

glenwoodsprings22 on behalf of smalltown7 said...

We'd give our kingdoms for a good investigative journalist to nail down the accommodations tax story. Because that is what every whistle has always been about and so are we. The sheltering, the covering, the sweep it under the rug nothing that ugly could really exist in our town mentality needs to be over. Needs to get done and gone, no longer welcome here. Public records, folks. On every topic we've brought forward. Can't argue with that anymore and it is time for our council to pull themselves up and just say NO more.

We don't need to be drug down any further and our economy hurt locally any worse than it has been for the past three years. Everyone in the entire demographic raced past us in tourism recovery well over a year ago. With this kind of ugly albatross hanging around our necks it's no wonder we have few to no lights on in our hotels at night. It's no wonder that we have not been overflowing for years in our beds.

Get off the dime, Glenwood Springs City Council.

Do your jobs.

Anonymous said...

How can this RFP process possibly be fair to other bidders besides the chamber? Leahy, Gamba and Edmonds are going to find that nobody respects them if they don't get a grip on this blatant disregard for the intelligence of this community.

reted said...

Does Hill Aevium have any idea at all that the only bidder they're up against has been sitting in all the sessions of the tourism board and has 3 of it's board of directors sitting?

Do we have any intelligent business or legal life sitting on our city council?

Hell, at this point I would settle for awake and breathing. But what's the worry?

We're just tossing around a half million again with no forethought or consideration. What the hell.

hammerandnails said...

Personally, I'm still hanging out waiting for Leo to pop up on one of the chat rooms on his CrackBerry.

Giving the good ol' McKinney diss and shuffle. It's how we know he's still breathing.

From my observations the answer to your second question rt is, no. We obviously must not. We don't seem to have anything in city administrator or city legal except superior government employees who do nothing unless they're told to. Perfect yes men to whatever.

Besides all the obvious bothering me the same as it's bothering others, what gets me the most is the arrogance of it all. Who do these officials think they are? Murphy was purpose put on and didn't even meet the deadline. The way council sprang the overload of chamber director seats, after #12-2010 was approved was nothing short of political deception. Who would have thought the folks would have to get so literal in what they said they wanted to insist on wording in the ordinance that the city has to follow the law? Tourism seat, fine. Tourism seat that is benefitting from the contract, not fine. Same with lodging. This stuff is all business 101, not complex legalese.

The other thing Hill Aevium needs to be concerned about not being told until after bid and by smalltown sending them links to check out, is what the reality is here in Glenwood Springs where the folks are concerned. That's a huge factor because they need the hearts and minds of all of us if they are going to succeed like they want to. Instead they have the iron curtain up in front of them and find out after the fact.

Here's what I and my house want.

We want our town. We want our community to be thriving and prosperous similar to the physical and monetary success of Vail and the Eagle Valley. We want the interference of whatever this high school mentality that keeps jacking the social pressure in this town to be gone. We want not just alive and breathing elected and hired officials doing their job, we want them to excel at their duty. To us.

Instead, we pretty much got nothin.

I think Hill Aevium should come stand up in council on Thurs. night and ask the questions they must have after finding out from the folks they're going to be serving, from the shadows, what full reality is in 81601. If that doesn't happen then I say who knows?

Maybe we woke 'em up this time. I hear the latest posts here have been tweeted to over 1,500 total followers on a number of people's personal tweet accounts. Have you got yours yet? I'm late catching up to 22 and suit. The race for followers is on.

zgnative said...

Who is the city representative to the tourism board? Is it still Matt Steckler?

Then if so it is his responsibility to appear before the public and thoroughly answer every request. And reassure the public that a fair and ethical bidding process has been given to Hill Aevium.

Thank you, smalltown group. Again. My understanding of what you have said here nails is that your group informed Hill Aevium of this blog resource. How completely devoid of integrity the act is by your council and tourism board to not have fully disclosed to begin with.

One would think they were trying to hide something.