Guest Editorial

BY Hani saba | FEBRUARY 4, 2015

What are they most proud of?

Trenk, Durkin, Spitzer and Monachino’s town council seats are on the line in the March recall election, and for good reason. Now we are hearing about how proud they are of their
accomplishments over the past two years, so here are a few questions you can ask them.

Ask them how proud they are of:
1. Their support of the Carefree referendum to stop development on Carefree Highway in Cave Creek, which the Cave Creek residents voted to shove up their nose by 75 percent?

2. Loading the Cave Creek Planning Commission with their operatives who helped Carefree collect signatures for the above referendum?

3. Their fraudulent campaign where they lied about a resort that never was, fire protection, the
budget that was too large and wasteful that they subsequently approved without change, the town’s destitute financial condition, secret accounts, crooked town manager and town council, no financial audits, etc., none of which were supported by any evidence and none of which was true?

4. Irresponsibly firing the best town manager Cave Creek ever had and causing the town to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars (and counting) to defend the resulting lawsuit from their
reckless and vindictive action?

5. Hanging an additional $3 million legal liability on the town from a federal lawsuit filed over the same illegal firing?

6. Hiring their totally unqualified buddy, Rodney Glassman, as interim town manager for 6 months at an exorbitant salary with an unlimited expense account, giving him an unconscionable $10,000 raise and an assistant and then extending his contract because he could not even hire his replacement on time?

7. Their ‘West’s Most Western Town’ fiasco beginning with a frat party council meeting in which they rudely insulted a Scottsdale councilman and frightened the State Land Commissioner right out of the meeting, paraded with a buffalo down to a Scottsdale City Council meeting which understandably refused to put them on the agenda, threatened legal action and sent them packing thereby destroying a good relationship with our neighbor and winning the title of the “West’s Most Obnoxious Town”?

8. The $80,000 road software they bought and exactly which roads have been improved and how?

9. The tens of thousands of dollars spent on shiny horses to somehow commemorate our roots as a historic mining town and the thousands of taxpayer dollars spent to illegally fund their full color campaign flyers sent out for months under the guise of a ‘town newsletter’?

10. Gifting our Cave Creek Court to Carefree using the’ Rodney Glassman Analysis’ that used bogus numbers and was never shared with the experts who actually ran the court (but loved by
Carefree) thereby costing the town thousands of dollars annually?

11. A town so incapable or so totally indifferent to public safety that it cannot afford properly or timely repair of dangerous roads, broken utilities, illegal and dangerous wash crossings or removing brush that obscures visibility at many stop signs in town – much less maintain anything?

12. Their desperate actions to hide their emails and making public records requests a bad joke by making them impossible to get, while bragging about improved transparency?

13. Their lawsuit to circumvent the democratic process and disenfranchise Cave Creek voters by trying to stop the recall election?

14. Repeatedly closing Cave Creek Road for motorcycle parking to support the big box bars to
the detriment of all other businesses in town?

15. Secretly plotting and nearly succeeding to throw a key component of the trails program under the bus to make their supporter on Morningstar Road happy?

16. Mortgaging Cave Creek’s economic future by foreclosing any meaningful economic development on Carefree Highway to appease their operatives who want no development on the most valuable commercial property in town?

17. Ripping off some $800,000 from the trails program to cover some of their irresponsible unbudgeted spending and then reducing the budget by about $1 million largely by kicking a debt payment down the road, a purely political move they will brag about that saves not one dollar?

18. Hiding from the public, the organizers, volunteers and sponsors during their Wild West Days and A Taste of Cave Creek this year, two signature special events which were hollow shells of past events sponsored by competent town councils?

19. Demonstrating their dishonesty and vindictiveness by attempting to have me, a potential opponent in the recall election, terminated by sending anonymous letters to my employer.

20. Continuing to demonstrate their vindictiveness by hiring lawyers to disqualify Susan Clancy, a potential opponent in the recall election, from the school board?

21. Secretly trying to destroy the Rancho Manana Golf Course and the property value of some 100 golf course homes by cutting off the golf course water and then adding arsenic to our drinking water?

Go ahead – ask them - amuse yourself – but don’t expect answers even resembling the truth.