How Cottonwood Is Killing Hosts

By Sherry Twamley
Editor and Publisher, Verde Village News  

Cottonwood AZ (December 16, 2017) – Cottonwood is a capitalistic parasite in dire need of radical fiscal reforms before they kill the city’s host taxpayers and water utility ratepayers who pay their paychecks. For the last 12 years the city voraciously fed off the hosts’ credit — the taxpayers and water ratepayers credit — and now the hosts are held hostage by the city’s obscene debt bondage for the next 30 years and are forced to pay some of the highest small city water rates in America. 

Guess What? How the Parasite has begun to Destroy the City, the Local Economy and the Host Taxpayers and the City Water Utility Consumers

Cottonwood’s 12-year pursuit of endless growth was a pyramid Ponzi Growth scheme bound to collapse and kill the hosts. In a complete subversion of free-market principles absent of supervision and regulation, for the last twelve years, the city of Cottonwood’s leaders took no risks, scored deals based on political prestige and power rather than competition, kept taxpayers in the dark by issuing nonvoter approved debt mechanisms without holding elections or allowing public debates — then ran up the taxpayers’ tab and walked away. 

This isn’t a fantasy. This isn’t capitalism. It’s ROBBERY.

Cottonwood did not grow the economy. In fact records show city leaders were insatiable parasites that grew by expanding the government and transferring wealth from the citizens to the city employees in big salaries and benefits. All the city achieved was to expand and reproduce itself, not help the hosts with meaningful job and wealth creation, or economic growth. As the city continues to feed off of the taxpayers’ credits and robbing their wallets, it is killing the economy, as the money taken from taxpayers is subtracted from the amount of money they have available to spend on taxable goods and services, and the city has no property tax.  It is solely dependent on sales taxes.

A basic tactic of Ponzi Growth schemes is a pervasive and unrelenting public relations campaign promoting the advantages and necessity of continued government expansion and growth. Every effort is made to equate growth with economic prosperity. No mention is made of the growing debts they reap and the costs the public will bear for future generations.  Former Cottonwood mayor Diane Joens, and City Manager, Doug Bartosh, relentlessly promoted themselves and the city’s massive expansion.

When confronted with financial concerns such as high debts, budget shortages or skyrocketing water rates, the politicians promoting the Ponzi Growth Scheme typically dismissed such concerns as unfounded and overblown. And they claimed there was no basis, or they obliquely stressed “innovation,” fake water sustainability and fake water conservation, ingenuity and cutting edge technology as the only appropriate and workable solutions. Many Cottonwood city council members were complicit with the city’s Ponzi growth scheme or tacitly supported its goals. Attempts to question or even discuss Ponzi growth concerns were denigrated and defamed to such an extent that comments about growth become radioactive!

The Biggest Swindle in City History is the Est. $14 Million Riverfront Vanity Mega-Project

The Riverfront Water Reclamation vanity mega-project debacle is a SUPER SEWER TAXPAYER SWINDLE that was never needed and may never open. The politicians saw opportunity to promote themselves, and exploited it with misrepresentation, then plowed ahead with no election or public debate, wasting millions of dollars in taxpayers’ dollars to build an unneeded, dysfunctional sewer plant. What was projected as an $8-$8.5 million project swelled incomprehensibly to almost $14 million to date, but the city is still burning through taxpayers’ money to finish the project with no end in sight.  The city has yet to find a viable method to discharge the treated affluent and may need to spend millions of dollars to build an underground reclamation pipe distribution system.

It’s incomprehensible, because $14-15 million in this small city is hard to get your head around. It’s the equivalent of an average Cottonwood resident’s salary of $21,212 a year for a staggering 660 years!!!  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JaZcrgoDQo

How will the City continue to find money to pay for all of the repairs and maintenance costs for its toxic brick and mortar assets and staggering six-figure employees’ compensation packages? The city is tapped out! In fiscal year 2018 the city of Cottonwood budgeted nearly $20 million in labor costs with 205 full time employee equivalents, which equates to nearly the same labor costs as the largest city in Yavapai County — Prescott Valley, which has 43,000 people.  Cottonwood is a tiny city with only about 11,500 people with seven city services it cannot afford and does not need, and all of its assets are underwater.