Indecisive Dan?

The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette today takes Mayor Dan Coody to task for running away from the hard decisions that must be made on the Fayetteville City Budget for 2009, because he "wants to pass on the hard—and politically dangerous—work of hammering out a budget to the city council." As the editorial points out, "Dan Coody's never been known to stick his neck out. He prefers to play it safe, letting others take the risks when the results of some decision could be politically uncomfortable." In other words, "When he isn’t being high-handed, he’s passing the buck of balancing the budget to the city council. All in all, not an edifying performance on the part of the city’s chief executive."

In this instance the Democrat-Gazette is correct, but Dan is usually quite adept at making lots of decisions on almost every problem facing him. For example:

Just last week, he decided he was for bottled water after he was against it.

He was for road impact fees before he was against them.

He was for a Hillside and Tree Preservation ordinance before he vetoed it.

He was for employee cost-of-living raises before he was against them.

He was against having a staff publicity agent before he was for it.

He was for an increase in property taxes before he was against them.

He was for City Plan 2025 infill development before he was for sprawl west of the city limits.

He was for the smoking ordinance before he was against extending it.

He was for putting the Police Department in the Mexican Original building before he was against it.

He was for regular press conferences to answer citizen questions before he was against them.

He was for stepping down as mayor before he went back on his word to run again.

He decided that the $63 million sewer debacle was the fault of Fred Hanna, then inflation, then Hurricane Katrina, then his consultants, and then the Water and Sewer Committee before he decided it was a work of art and a grand success worth two televised ribbon-cuttings.

Dan Coody can make a decision on any question. Lots of them. That way, he can keep lots of good things going. Or not.

School Board Election

Today is not only the last day to register if you wish to vote in the November 4th General Election, it is also the last day for early voting at the courthouse in the important run-off election for the Fayetteville School Board.

We endorsed Jim Halsell the first time around, and we do so again for the same reasons. One vote can make the difference in Fayetteville elections, especially these school elections with low turnout and with the far too limited and poorly publicized polling places this year.

If you haven't had or don't get a chance to early vote, get thee to the polls tomorrow, Tuesday, October 7th. Your vote can make a difference for positive change in our public schools.

The Man Without a Conscience

The Northwest Arkansas Times reported but failed to connect the dots and missed the real story; however, local bloggers at Street Jazz and Albunique immediately saw the irony in Dan Coody's most recent outlandish flip-flop-fib.

In October 2007, the Think Outside the Bottle campaign kicked off nationwide, urging municipal governments to cut off bottled-water contracts and announcing that mayors of Boston, Minneapolis, Sacramento, Portland, Chicago, and Salt Lake City were joining in the effort. They argued that bottled water corporations are changing the way people think about water, manufacturing artificial demand for an essential resource that flows directly from our taps. Moreover, the plastic bottles require massive amounts of fossil fuels to manufacture and transport, and billions of these bottles wind up in landfills every year. Ultimately, the marketing convinces one in five people that the only place to get drinking water is from a bottle, it threatens the political will to adequately fund our public water systems.

Nine months later, in June 2008, Mayor Dan Coody held a big press conference to announce that Fayetteville would no longer use public funds to purchase bottled water and that he would pull water bottles from city-owned vending machines. We were then treated to constant replays of his sideshow on Government Channel 16. Greg Harton immediately lavished praise on Coody for "trying to carve out a role as the community’s conscience." Local retailers of tap water purification systems, like Moshe and Hamsa Newmark and Jeremy Hess, quickly endorsed Coody for reelection. Coody followed with big hype for a Cowbird-paid trip to Washington to talk about how municipal water systems were suffering.

Then the charade began to unravel. Just three weeks ago, Richard Drake reported on Street Jazz that bottled water was still being sold in vending machines in City Hall. Drake also discovered that Coody had tried to rewrite history to make himself look like he was ahead on all the other mayors in the country, claiming that Fayetteville had banned bottled water several years ago under his leadership.

Today, Dan Coody dropped all pretense of any concern about the problems created by the bottled water scam. He brags that he has been recruiting a foreign bottled water company from Iceland to set up a regional distribution center in Fayetteville. Coody thinks they will store that water in the asbestos filled Mexican Original plant that has sat vacant for years since Dan just had to have it.

So much for the alleged superiority of water from the Beaver Water District. So much for the environmental consequences from manufacturing and disposal of plastic bottles and the carbon footprint of those delivery trucks. So much for Dan Coody's fake commitment to sustainability. So much for anything Dan Coody says between now and the end of the year.

Dan Coody's $39 Million October Surprise

On the City Council agenda for next Tuesday, October 7, are four very important items regarding SouthPass that have escaped the notice of the local newspapers and television stations: (1) a resolution to amend the Master Street Plan that has not yet been considered by the Street Committee; (2) an ordinance annexing 856 acres of the development into the city; (3) an ordinance approving the developers' 910.36-acre Planned Zoning District; and (4) a resolution expressing the willingness of the City of Fayetteville to cost share street and sewer infrastructure costs that would be utilized by both the Southpass Development and the future community park. It is the last one that Mayor Dan Coody has kept secret for four years and has studiously avoided sharing the exorbitant price tag with the public and the City Council, his little October Surprise for the taxpayers.

After more than four years of promising to help pay for the extension of water, sewer, and roads to the proposed SouthPass development outside the city limits and the Connie Edmonston Regional Softball Park next to a leaking abandoned dump, Dan Coody has finally put a price tag on what he is asking the taxpayers to pony up. You had better be sitting down before reading this. The total cost in 2008 dollars is $39,115,229. Dan is proposing to trust a cost-share agreement with a Limited Liability Corporation that includes some developers who cannot finance construction on property acquired from the city after cleared by a $3.6 million TIF district. If approved and if the developers ever perform, that would still leave the city's residents obligated for $26,168,218 to get a park. Not counting inflation and another debacle, of course.

That's right, only $26 million for a park under Coody's proposed partnership with these developers. Considering the rate of inflation in highway construction that nearly tripled in three years on the Crossover Road project and considering Dan's financially disasterous experience with the massive $66 million cost over run on the sewer plant debacle in only a few years, that $26 million will be what . . . $100 million? Who knows? No one. Not the Mayor, and not the City Council. Least of all the taxpayers who will be asked to finance the project through yet another bond issue and increased water and sewer rates.

Dan Coody has failed to present a balanced budget for next year, and now he is asking us to trust him on this dubious project of questionable need and tremendous expense. Any Alderman who votes against it will be labeled by Coody as being against parks, and Greg Harton will gleefully publish that spin. Any Alderman who votes for it cannot be trusted on financial matters and should not be reelected. It is a bad bargain, paying a minimum of $26 million to $39 million before inflation and mismanagement for a sports park. We cannot afford it. Just say No.

The Tree Museum (Part One)

Uh oh, Greg Howe must not have gotten the memo that all city employees are required to praise Mayor Dan Coody as being the inventor and only political defender of the sustainability movement. The city's new Urban Forester told the Northwest Arkansas Times that the Tree Preservation and Protection Ordinance doesn’t seem to be living up to its name. The problem is not so much the tree preservation provisions of the City Code, he concluded, but with its lack of serious enforcement by the city administration.

Howe said he is concerned about how often mitigation is approved instead of preservation and how often mitigation does not appear to be working. Trees planted in mitigation are required to have a 90% survivability rate after three years, but on the sites he has reviewed so far, none even come close and the average survivability rate is only 31%. Sites that failed to meet the mitigation standard were developed by Dave Jorgensen, John Ellis, Bill Lazenby, and others.

The worst example, Howe said, was McDonald Eye Associates that “only had three trees that they needed to keep alive, and yet all three of them are not there. They’re dead and the stumps are still in the ground. Here’s a place that has high maintenance, but the trees are dead.” Howe should watch his words, because Jay McDonald is listed on Dan Coody’s campaign website as wanting to "keep a good thing going."

The Urban Forester position was left vacant by the administration for six months while Connie Edmonston conducted a search to fill the position. Sarah Patterson left the position in January, shortly after the planning staff rejected her advice about tree preservation on the lot where Central Methodist Church built a 5-story parking deck. Last month, the planning staff recommended and the Fayetteville Planning Commission approved a conditional-use permit allowing developers of the TIF Giant Pit to build a parking lot on the site without complying with requirement for street trees, interior parking lot trees, and tree islands provisions of the city code.

Another four years of this, and Joni Mitchell can tell the story of what happened in Fayetteville.

Self-Evident Quote of the Day

"You don't have to pass an IQ test to be in the Senate."

--Senator Mark Pryor, Religulous, quoted in The Morning News

Matthew Petty Attacks Bobby Ferrell

Matthew Petty today sent out an email accusing Ward 3 Alderman Bobby Ferrell and other members of the Fayetteville City Council of "political grandstanding" for insisting that Mayor Dan Coody present a balanced budget. "Insisting that the administration provide a balanced budget before budget talks even start is like putting a band-aid on a cancer sore," he said. Coody has repeatedly ignored the City Council Resolution asking for him to present a balanced budget, and Petty contends that Ferrell and others are "trying to micro-manage and limit our city's executive branch."

Coody submitted a budget of $35,919,400 for 2009, an increase of $896,400 over this year and representing a deficit of $535,000. Like Petty, he also accused Ferrell and others of "political grandstanding" for insisting that he submit a balanced budget for the city instead of spending the city's reserve funds to cover the cost of his increased budget. Even with the proposed deficit, Coody's budget does not include funds for expanding the hours of the Fayetteville Public Library, and for the third consecutive year it does not include cost of living raises for city employees.

Petty said he had "not talked with Mayor Coody about this issue, so I can only rely on the articles printed in the papers. That said, I'm not sure there is a difference" between his position and Coody's. He said issued his statement to "educate Ward 2 voters" and that it might help to resolve the current disagreement by convincing Council members that his approach is a better way than shirking their responsibility.

Mark Kinion, Past President of the Fayetteville Council of Neighborhoods, and Petty are candidates for Ward 2 Alderman to replace Nancy Allen, who has endorsed Kinion. They took different positions in the debate sponsored by the League of Women Voters, including their views on the budget. Petty, whose website says he is a black belt in Tae Kwon Do and Kenpo, a graduate of the Arkansas High School for Mathematics and Science, and founder of SocialSustenance.Org, said he had run volunteer organization with budgets around $10,000, and usually "the budgets were not balanced," so "to compensate, we seek additional funding or cut programs." That is somewhat the same approach suggested by Alderman Ferrell's resolution, but Petty and Coody are advocating a politically painless way to cover expenses when it is the taxpayers' money and an election year.

Beautiful Bella Vista

Daddy Warbucks has an article today on the recent awards and national rankings claimed by Bella Vista, the Benton County community that has been an incorporated city for less than two years. It doesn't have a daily newspaper, a high school football team, nor it's own Chamber of Commerce, but it gets national media attention.

"Bella Vista," notes Warbucks, "continues to get national recognition for the outstanding quality of life it offers. The community was ranked one of America’s Top 10 Best Healthy Places To Retire, according to U.S. News & World Report. The announcement is right on the heels of Bella Vista being named one of the Top 25 best places for affordable homes by CNNMoney.com and Money Magazine."

Strangely, Bella Vista Mayor Frank Anderson hasn't called a press conference or put up a website to brag that he alone is responsible for the rankings and all the national media attention, and he doesn't tote the awards around with him in a grocery bag to whip out and try to impress people. He hasn't even hinted that everything will go to hell in a handbasket if he is not reelected or that he is the only person who can keep the city moving forward. Mayor Anderson knows that everyone in the community makes a contribution to what it is, and he doesn't try to claim all the credit for those tokens of success.

Meanwhile, Fayetteville was not ranked among CNNMoney.com's Top 100 Places to Live. Who can we blame for that?

Walt the Windbag

Walt Eilers is said to be a decent man, and he had run a respectable, if somewhat uninspiring, campaign for Mayor of Fayetteville up until now. October is crunch time for a field of six, and sometimes truth gets bent, stretched, or ignored as candidates seek attention and approval. It is sad to see Mr. Eilers fall prey to the temptation of foisting falsehoods on the voters, making him look deceptive and desperate.

Posted on his campaign website is what purports to be his answers to a candidate questionnaire from the Sierra Club. He starts off answering the first question about whether he voted for or against the proposed road impact fees submitted to the voters in April 2007. Eilers says, "I voted against the road impact fees," and goes on to give an explanation of why he voted against them.

FACT CHECK: Voting records in the Washington County Clerk's Office reveal that Walter Paul Eilers, Jr. did not vote at all in the 2007 election on impact fees.

Then, in an answer explaining why he supports the SouthPass development just outside the Fayetteville city limits and in the Greenland School District and how much it might cost city taxpayers to provide infrastructure to the development, Walt Eilers states, "It is a cost share with the city in return for the 200-acre parkland worth $18.86 million."

FACT CHECK: The entire 800 acres of land owned by the Cummings family was purchased at the price locked in by the city, approximately $6.9 million.

How 200 acres of land purchased for less than $1.75 million suddenly becomes worth $18.86 million to Walt Eilers in these hard times for the real estate market is something that escapes logical explanation. Even Dan Coody, who always exaggerates everything except his own faults, valued the parkland at only $2 million back in the boom times of 2004.

Such blatant factual misrepresentations must call into question a candidate's veracity on everything else they have to say about themselves and their proposed public policies during a campaign.

UPDATE: A spokesperson for the Eilers campaign has explained: "The $18.86 million figure came from Richard Alexander. The number wasn't a 'blatant factual misrepresentation,' but rather the number Walt had in his notes when he wrote his answers."

Unbalanced

Like George Bush, Dan Coody has yet to submit a balanced budget for the City of Fayetteville. Eight years of fiscal irresponsibility is enough. This time, the mayor has willfully ignored a City Council resolution directing him to present a balanced budget for consideration, because Coody could not do it.

Alderman Bobby Ferrell, who has far more business experience than Coody, was the author of the Balanced Budget Resolution that was passed in August. He is quite serious that the city be run in a business-like manner, balancing income and expenses, with prudent management that avoids wasteful spending and multi-million dollar cost overruns that bust the budget. Coody, not so much.

Last month, Coody told the Council he didn't care what they said, he couldn't present a balanced budget. He presented a draft that was more than $535,000 in the hole and sucked up reserve funds to cover his red ink.

Last night, Coody told the City Council that they should start meeting on Saturdays to work on his proposed budget deficit. Alderman Ferrell said that Coody could call meetings until the cows came home, but he wasn't going to discuss the budget until the mayor demonstrated the ability to present a balanced budget as requested by the council.

Last year, Coody proposed raising property taxes without a vote of the people, but now he has changed his tune since this is an election year. "I’m not interested in raising taxes, laying people off, and the only option is going into reserves," Coody told Ferrell yesterday. Coody should have said that he was more interested in continuing to hire more out-of-state consultants, award no-bid contracts, cover his enormous travel expenses, stage multiple ribbon-cuttings for the sewer debacle, and sign contracts with certain developers with no idea of the infrastructure costs involved, while refusing to institute measures to cut out waste in his administrative departments and spend more wisely.

The mayor has abdicated his responsibility on the budget. Even the ever reliable Coody apologist Greg Harton should be able to see that this is more than "a failure to communicate." It is a failure of leadership.