By Sherry Twamley
(April 29, 2018)
The city of Cottonwood should be wrapped in yellow crime tape and dusted for fingerprints. For 13 years, Cottonwood’s political leaders have served relatively narrow private interests within a city and allowed corruption to flourish in a city that was lacking in active and organized constituencies (including citizen watchdog groups and investigative journalists), and faced little or no outside scrutiny.
Former Mayor Diane Joens and City Manager, Doug Bartosh and his puppet, City Finance Director, Rudy Rodriguez, relentlessly controlled the local media ‘1,000 percent’ by limiting access and information unless they provided commentary or scripted propaganda to the media to maintain complete control of the local newspapers. By limiting access and information, Joens and Bartosh manipulated the media to always get enough favorable press coverage to keep themselves in Cottonwood’s government, and keep them in the limelight for 13 years despite years of fiscal misconduct. When a local newspaper editor from the Verde News or a reporter from another local media or citizen posted an unfavorable social media comment about Joens, Bartosh or their crony city officials including then Vice Mayor Karen Pfeifer, the mayor typically ordered the city manager or finance director – their press surrogates — to go after the media and ‘set them straight’. Then Mayor Joens and City Manager Bartosh even used members of the City’s police force to track their adversaries.
As a result, a handful of corrupt Cottonwood officials effectively became the city’s ONLY CONSTITUENCY, instead of the taxpayers.
More than $150 million changed hands since former mayor Diane Joens took office in June 2003 and since she left Cottonwood unsuccessfully in 2016 to run for higher office. Diane Joens planned to go out in glory as she lusted for more power and prestige but lost the election to Supervisor Randy Garrison in 2016 by a large majority of votes. It is no secret that during her tenure, she locked horns with Yavapai County supervisors, and the mayors of Sedona and Clarkdale. Her unholy alliance with Dan Leuder, Cottonwood’s former Utilities Manager, and Doug Bartosh, made her untouchable.
It will likely be months, well after the 2018 City elections, before the public and the city voters find out what really happened, and how Mayor Joens, Doug Bartosh and crony city officials have committed suicide to the city’s water utility ratepayers and city taxpayers. But when the facts come out, don’t be surprised if the signs at city hall have to be changed to “Welcome to the Heart of RUIN.” That’s unfortunate.
Today the City’s mounting debts and failure to cut expenses, places Cottonwood on the brink of financial disaster with almost $100 million in long-term debts and unfunded pension liabilities; only 60 days’ operating reserves left in the bank, and the City’s employees earning more than $22 million a year in salaries and benefits, which make some of the City Managers’ salaries and benefit packages highest in the United States among comparatively small cities.
Certainly one of the most serious threats to the City’s demise is the City’s low reserve levels and insufficient pension contributions which are growing at about $2 million per year as reduced funding levels for public worker retirement plans are at very low levels, mainly due to the municipality’s astronomical personnel costs. This cripples the City’s ability to pay down debts and unfunded pension liabilities.
In 2018 the City plans to increases sales tax, water and wastewater rates to RECORD LEVELS to cover budget shortfalls and to increase spending on capital improvement — including millions of dollars from water utility ratepayers for the boondoggle Riverfront Wastewater project that soared from its original $8M budget in 2013 (Coe and Van Loo Engineers’ design plan) and is racing towards $20M.
Will restructuring be coming to cottonwood?
For these reasons and more, it is probable that reorganization or restructuring of some sort in the future must take place for Cottonwood to survive. On February 23, 2017, by Stephen Fehr of the Pew Charitable Trusts said in an article,* “Municipal bankruptcies are costly and rare; only about half of the states [including Arizona] give cities permission to file a Chapter 9, many with conditions. A more common approach to avoid bankruptcy is for state officials to intervene in local government operations by appointing a temporary manager, receiver or control board to balance the budget, which may or may not include state aid. Twenty states have enacted laws allowing such intervention programs. The most recent high-profile example of this involvement by state officials was New Jersey’s appointment of an interim manager to run Atlantic City to stave off a Chapter 9. *‘Service-Delivery Insolvency’ is Changing Municipal Bankruptcy.”
The sad thing is: if people could understand what these politicians have really done to the City’s finances and the long-term damage they have inflicted on taxpayers, they would be horrified. The politicians might lie but numbers DON’T LIE.
Sherry Twamley
Editor and Publisher
Verde Village News
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9 Comments
Wonderful explanation of how the citizens have been bilked out of their trust and tax dollars by a mayor, council and others who only look out for themselves by building monuments to their time in office. Egyptians built pyramids, Cottonwood officials build water companies they can’t afford and a monsterous sewage plant that can’t take care of the entire city and they didn’t plan that out!
Can’t think of a better reason for citizens to get out and vote conservative, non-spenders into the council this next election.
Thank you Ms Paddock
I have spent many years working in civil construction in foreign places and encountered corruption, on a scale that would boggle the mind of anyone who has not watched any Hollywood movie productions. One of the reasons which I chose Cottonwood as my end of life retirement home was because it seemed nice and quiet. After some time I sensed that there was an undercurrent of unease but I did not pursue this as I am only a simple engineer, not a political activist. I was informed by people who have lived here longer than me that “You don’t understand” and “You are paranoid because of your overseas experiences”. Your letter reignites my sense of smell and raises fears in my mind as to whether my choice of location and timing for retirement were sensible and whether I will be able to afford any sort of life in retirement.
It has never been more important than to vote in the primary city election in August for new candidates with NO TIES to the Cottonwood City Council and no friends inside the City. There are two new candidates running, including Jackie Nairn and Michael Mathews. We have vetted both of them and support them. Cottonwood has become a looting machine by controlling100% of the tap water resource industry, like the thugs who trade African diamonds and Egyptian oil.As an important indicator of civic engagement, voter participation is a critical component in helping to hold elected officials accountable. Presumably, higher rates of voter participation can safeguard against corruption as active and engaged citizens and watchdogs scrutinize the actions of local officials. In the case of Cottonwood, monopoly control over city government was enabled by a confluence of factors that began to take shape in 2004: declining voter participation, lack of media scrutiny, and community organization disengagement. Combined with a system designed to block citizen intervention, these are the underlying factors that allowed this predatory state to emerge. THIS IS WHY VOTING AND CIVIC ENGAGEMENT IS SOOOOO CRITICAL TO DEMOCRACY. I implore citizens to get engaged in their communities and help good candidates get elected, no matter where you live, to the Cottonwood City Council!!! The City of Cottonwood has never been accountable to their people through a social contract based on taxation and representation because they REFUSED TO HOLD ELECTIONS to condemn and buy six private water companies and take over the entire drinking water natural resource in the Verde Valley area FOR PROFIT by creating an AntiTrust Monopoly (Sherman Act); issue millions of dollars of taxpayer bonds, then force the ratepayers to repay the debt and buy their own water companies back they had before for up to 507% markup for 30 years!!! All of this was illegal. Government can only behave this way if it doesn’t need the consent of its people — they got away with these crimes by breaking the state laws that required an election for each of the water companies and each of the bonds issued with IMPUNITY. Now the city is close to $100 million in taxpayer debt for the next 30+ years, have only 60 days’ reserves left in the bank, so they are planning sales tax, water and wastewater rate increases to continuing paying obscene salaries and benefits to some of the highest paid city executives in the United States of comparable small size cities. Only voting them out of office will stop this corruption or recalling the bad city leaders. Did you know that the City is planning to pay City Attorney, Steve Horton, up to $272,000 in salary, benefits and fringe benefits in its FY 2019 preliminary budget? If the preliminary budget is approved, it will go into effect July 1st, 2018. It would make Horton’s compensation package bigger than all U. S. Governors’ salaries.
I found it interesting that a town like Cottonwood with a population of around 11,000 would pay a city attorney $272,000 so I found this comparison of towns with much larger populations:
Attorney I $90,701 Phoenix,AZ March 29, 2018
Attorney I $83,379 Prescott,AZ March 29, 2018
Attorney I $88,871 Scottsdale,AZ March 29, 2018
How much work could Horton do to merit a salary of double in some cases to those listed? Is Cottonwood such a despicable town they can’t get anyone else to work here at a reasonable salary or is there something else going on that merits pay increases like this and others they have handed out?
It would be interesting to see how Ms. Twambly arrived at her computation of Mr. Horton’s salary package. It would also be interesting to ask her why she leaves out important details like the State legislature requiring cities to make up their failure to adequately fund the public employee’s retirement fund. Or the fact that while Cottonwood has acquired the private water companies, they have also invested millions of dollars in arsenic abatement systems and new pumps and pipelines to replace old, leaking pipelines that would sometimes cause complete water failures in parts of the Verde Village unts. Arsenic abatement systems that were either not maintained properly or in such a state of disrepair that they had to be completely replaced. Cottonwood took on that responsibility for the citizens of the Verde Villages. They have installed redundant pumping stations so that we, in the Village can have water. Do we pay more? Yes, because it costs more to provide water to the Village units. Simple topography will prove that point.
Ms. Twambly provides a lot of questionable information without providing sources. Ask her to provide those sources and prove what she is saying. She is asking us to believe her when she provides no sources for her data. She want the City to prove its data. She should prove hers if she wants us to believe her.
We are all hopefully aware by now of the history of the last 10+ years and how we got into the the financial bind we are now facing. It’s time to look toward the future and chart a path back to financial health for the city of Cottonwood. It’s going to require a hard look at cutting expenses. If done properly that does not also have to come with a commensurate reduction in city services. That’s their first objection to spending cuts, “what services do you want to cut?”. Perhaps there are some services that don’t necessarily benefit the residents that could be eliminated. Taxes and fees do not necessarily need to be increased but it’s already a given that those increases will be implemented before a new council is seated. A new city manager will take over shortly after the beginning of 2019. A new city council will be seated in November of this year and I’m confident the voters will seat reformation minded candidates. This could be the beginning of something great for Cottonwood. Something not seen since the day’s of Brian Mickelsen who ran a tight ship and had millions in reserves in the bank. I have talked with the newest members of the council and observed them for some time now and I’m encouraged by their desire to move the city back in the right direction. Identify the problem and the solution will present itself. We have identified the problem, it’s now time to implement the solution.
Well said, Michael!!! This is the first time in years there are three Cottonwood ciy council seats up for election in August 2018. This is possibly the best opportunity ever for registered Cottonwood residents to stop the insanity by voting for new council members without ties to the City Council cronies and friends in the government who are capable and willing to make the necessary reforms to cut expenses and irresponsible spending. There has never been a better time to right the ship!
There will always be the cry to “cut expenses”. Well, since you seem to know so much about the City budget and processes, what expenses would you cut? Where would you suggest the staff of the City make the cuts to the Budget? Police? Fire? Streets? Library? Transit? Public works? Waste Water? Water Department? Sidewalks? Parks? Rec Center? Lights? Staff?
We have been asked every year to cut budgets for the last 6 years that I have been here and I know it was done for at least four years before that. So, I ask you, where in the City budget, do YOU think there is room to cut?