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Dear Editor:
If you’ve attended a Westfield City Council meeting, you’ve seen the dysfunction between our elected officials. However, if you’re too busy providing for your family to watch the theatrics, then you’re probably unaware of the poor decisions that impact your daily life.
Our City Council and Mayor prefer arguments to community investments. When the Council criticized Grand Park’s finances in 2020, the mayor avoided an audit by handpicking firms for a citywide review. This six-month project morphed into 13 months of million-dollar lawsuits and finger-pointing between elected officials. Here are some key takeaways from the resulting reports:
“Dysfunctional working relationships between and among the Mayor, Clerk Treasurer and City Council represent a significant impediment to organizational success.”
“Some feel that the more recently elected council members have little interest in learning about what the city departments do.”
“Contracts and [Grand] park revenues have not been transparently managed … resulting in room for criticism and concern over stewardship of city resources, conflicts of interest and questionable decisions.”
“During the course of our interviews with Westfield officials and staff, we learned that there are similar control-related concerns including … nepotism ….”
“A concern common amongst the individuals interviewed is that Mayor Cook’s children were buying residential property before it was developed into Grand Junction. There is belief that Mayor Cook’s children had inside information … several years before the public knew.”
“Consistent among many of the interviews was a high skepticism with the operations occurring at Grand Park … There is concern that some entities received special discounts relating to Grand Park … There is belief that the City loaned $6 million to Grand Park with no repayment terms or records.
“In February 2019, public information regarding Pro-X [owned by Mayor Cook’s nephew] leasing costs for land was requested … The Pro-X lease is $36,225 per year … The lease amount raised concerns by the vendor requesting the information, stating it does not ‘seem to make any sense at all for us to pay $250k–$300k per acre when Pro-X paid $10k per acre or less.”
“[Clerk Treasurer Cindy] Gossard and her daughter … [the] Chief Deputy Clerk Treasurer, both work within the same office and share functions that may produce a conflict of interest, including receiving and sending cash/checks, control functions over authorizations and approvals, payroll functions and purchasing card approvals.”
“[Clerk Treasurer Gossard’s daughter] was listed as the approving user for 105 of Ms. Gossard’s 107 purchasing card transactions from mid-July 2018 to December 31, 2020 … [Her daughter’s] purchasing card transactions were approved by Ms. Gossard … Due to the familial relationship and employment positions, there is a clear conflict of interest with Ms. Gossard’s and … [her daughter’s] purchasing card transaction approvals.”
The Oct. 25 presentation of the conclusions (viewable at bit.ly/3dC6am7 and bit.ly/3EIOlxO) culminated in the following:
“The core issues that led to this project [to review city finances] centered around concerns of fraud, waste, and abuse. We did not find evidence to support fraud. We did, however, find matters that led … [us to] conclude waste and abuse.”
Infighting, conflicts of interest, nepotism, and taxpayer funded lawsuits instead of police cars and the Monon tunnel under 161st Street? Westfield needs leadership and investment. If our current elected officials cannot provide this, we must elect new leaders who will build a Westfield we can be proud of.
Neil Koglin
Westfield
He is not wrong on many of the items above. The process will continue to be dysfunctional until this Administration understands there is a system of proper checks and balances. This is why there is a separation of powers between City Council, the Mayor, and the Clerk Treasurer.
Most (not all) of the City Council believes we should put an end to the waste and frivolous lawsuits, and believes in a balanced budget and transactions should be at arms-length with proper bids. Most also believe in lowering taxes as well as using the tax dollars for what they were intended for like schools, police, fire, and roads, not putting them in areas where the administration through their appointees can control the tax dollars and continue to take away those dollars from our schools, etc.
Where Neil is incorrect, the Chief of Police did not need any new cars and stated so after discussion, and the 161st street tunnel was another example of Administration waste on handing over a no-bid contract without any discussion of finances (how to pay for it), or impact to neighbors land, etc. We just let the developers rule the roost by donating to elected officials to get their way, and let the taxpayers hold the bag of nothing at the end.
The good news is this Mayor has two more years, and there will be a change of elected officials. There will be those who run next which the Mayor appointed to APC, boards, and other positions for council as well as Mayor. I would look long and hard before electing any of these individuals as they may be more interested in power instead of the taxpayer.
Troy Patton, CPA
City Council at large