Congratulations to Agee and Kearns. For All of you People wanting a sports complex. Why hasn’t anyone complained about the lack of hours the South County Community Center is open “for the kids?”

Congratulations to Agee and Kearns for their wins last night.  An obvious question to Kearns is, are you going to be a leader or a follower?  A leader will do what is necessary in order to serve his or her bosses, the tax payers of Glenpool, to assure financial stability within the community and by paving his or her path on their own.  A follower will accept a position of submission to someone like Tim Fox and follow his desires instead of the desires of the people who voted for you.  The people of Glenpool will learn real quick whether you, Mr. Kearns, are a leader or a follower.

I simple way to show leadership is to start working on the issues discussed below.

All of the people complaining about needing a sports complex but who has ever asked our city leaders to get with Tulsa County to increase the hours of the community center so our kids can be there on Friday and Saturday nights and on Sundays instead of on the streets.

Who has done that?  What a simple thing to do but no, everyone just wants to spend more money on a new facility.  The community center closes at 4 on Fridays, closes at 3 on Saturdays and isn’t even opened on Sundays!  Why hasn’t any of our city council members taken on a simple task that would allow our kids to be at that center at least 30 more hours each week?!  Pretty simple.

It’ kind of like the traffic light on Hwy 75, if our city “leaders” would have started lobbying ODOT back in 2006 in order to get rid of the traffic light we would be nine (9) years closer to having all of the retail and commercial development we need in order to be a thriving and growing community.  But no, our city “leaders” wanted a conference center that is losing money daily instead of taking care of a problem that would have brought in private developers from all around.  That is what happens when you have city council members that are NOT true leaders and DO NOT know how to grow a city properly.

Hopefully, the new council will see that a simple fix like increasing the community center hours would be a great start to improving our community without costing much at all.  How about lobbying to increase the hours that it is open to 7am to 10pm, seven (7) days a week.  Now that would be leadership.

Also, if the new city council would make it a priority to get with ODOT and see if they can move up the project that will remove the hwy 75 traffic light and add an overpass at that intersection AND add access roads on both sides of hwy 75, this effort alone will probably cause Glenpool to finally get the additional sales tax revenue it needs in order to grow properly.

Glenpool Financial Fact: Net Cash from Over $2.1 million to Under $80,000!

Fact:  The facts below come from the 12/03/14, City Council agenda packet and from the 2008-2009 City Budget.   The info related to the facts below starts on page 48 of the agenda packet.   Click here to get this city council agenda packet and click here for the 2008-2009 budget.

Financial Fact:  Long-term debt from $10 million to over $82 million, approved by Robinson and Fox.

Financial Fact:  Our net cash decreased from $2.1 million in 2009 to less than $80,000 in June of 2014.

Fact:  Our water rates were increased to cover our financial shortfalls.

Fact:  On Facebook there are some discussions about the revenue and expenses of GUSA and the City of Glenpool General Fund but both entities are required in order to pay our bills.   Isn’t it basically the same pot of money that we have to use in order to pay our bills?  Both funds have been transferring money back and forth over the years in order to cover the required expenses in each fund.  The main thing to be concerned about is the total revenue and total expenses for the City of Glenpool as one entity.

Fact:  Combined Revenue (less depreciation) and Expenses for GUSA and the City of Glenpool General Fund (GF) from 2007 to 2014 shown below.

Revenue for GF and GUSA:

2007 –  $6,191,940 and in 2014 – $11,419,295.  An increase of $5,227,335.

Expenses for GF and GUSA:

2007 – $5,509,026 and in 2014 – $11,542,756.  An increase of $6,033,730.

Can someone at city hall please explain to the residents of Glenpool why our expenses increased more than our revenues by more than $800,000 from 2007 to 2014?  We had all of that Wal-Mart sales tax revenue and now it is gone and what do we have to show for it?

Question:  Do we not have city council members that sit on an annual audit committee to review the annual audits?  If so, did they not see the negative cash flow info and reduction of annual assets that was stated within each audit?

Question:  Why is it that Robinson, Fox and company had to spend all of our revenue to cause us to have a negative cash flow?  We could have been saving possibly $4,000,000 per year and by 2014 we could have possibly paid cash for a $18,000,000 sports complex (Robinson and company supported raising taxes and going into more debt for a sports complex) and still had $10,000,000 cash in the bank.  Instead we got a city hall building for our city administration (about 12 people) and a conference center that is losing money.  Good job Robinson and company.

Fact:  Our debt obligations in 2015 are $269,000 more than in 2014. 

Fact:   Our debt obligations in 2016 are $514,000 more than in 2015. 

How is the City going to pay for this increase of over $780,000 in debt payments than what we have today?  More water rate increases?

Fact:  The residents of Glenpool are stuck with these debt payments until 2041.  That’s right, the debt Robinson and Fox approved, the residents of Glenpool have to pay on for another 26 years!

Obvious Fact:  Brandon Kearns supports Tim Fox and vice versa.  It is very possible that if you want more of the same financial issues, then you should vote for Kearns.  If you want a potentially more stable financial future then you should vote for Korb.

Obvious Fact:  Keith Robinson caused the financial mess we are in and just knowing that fact should cause you to vote for Agee.

Unfortunate Fact:  We need qualified elected officials that know the basics of a financial statement and at the very least, we need elected officials that at a minimum know when to ask questions about obvious red flags located in our annual audits.  If no one on the city council is qualified to read and understand simple financial statements then we need to hire an independent consultant each year to review the audit and then let our city council members know what is in it and what steps to take to correct any issues.  Pretty basic stuff, they are elected to watch over our tax dollars and for the last eight (8) years they have failed, in my opinion.

Note to commenters:  Please make sure when you comment that you check for spelling and grammatical errors.  I have not approved several comments due to the fact that if approved it may make the commenter look bad and that would not be right, my errors are bad enough at times.  If your comment has not been approved, that could be one of the reasons.  I will also not approve comments that contain specific opinions about certain subject matter without providing facts to back up those opinions.

Good Luck Glenpool.

 

Evidently, it is very possible that Tim Fox does not know the difference between public debt and private debt.  Tim Fox may also be confused on why Wal-mart came to Glenpool.  Wal-Mart came to Glenpool because of all of the new homes (more private debt) being built in this area,  not because of something he or any of the administration did.  Fox may also need to be informed that homeowners make their own decision to get into debt or not, after all it is their own money.  How absurd is it for a public official to compare the choice an individual has to buy a new home and get into debt to what he has done to our city finances.   After Wal-Mart opened its doors Tim Fox leveraged that new income and caused the City of Glenpool to obtain over $75million in long-term debt (public debt), that is more debt than Owasso and Bixby combined!

Thanks to Tim Fox and the previous council members (Robinson, Roberts, Buchanan, Czeschin) who caused our debt to go from $10 million to over  $75 million, our net cash has gone from $2,121,226 in 2009 down to $76,371 at the end of June, 2014.  From over $2 million to $76,371!  Now, why doesn’t everyone ask Tim Fox why this happened and ask him what will happen if the City doesn’t get any additional revenue asap, other than the revenue they just started receiving from the residents due to the higher water bills.

Seems to me that if you vote for Robinson and Kearns the city will be back to working on the Ponzi scheme and they will try to obtain more debt to pay off the current obligations.

Vote for Agee and Korb for a hopefully more secure financial future for the City of Glenpool.  Tough decisions may have to be made in order for Glenpool to survive financially and I think our best bet is with Agee, Korb and Ballew.

Good luck Glenpool, with a “leader” like Fox you better hope Glenpool gets some much needed revenues Asap and hope Robinson and Kearns DO NOT get elected.

Vote for the Candidate that Proposes to Lower our Expenses any way they Can.

Here is a way the City can reduce expenses by eliminating a huge money losing asset so they will not have to raise our water rates any higher; sell the city hall/conference center building to TCC and/or Church on the Move and move our city hall back to the white building on 141st street.  The City borrowed over $10 million for that building, not including interest, and the revenue from the conference center may not even pay for the salaries and the utilities associated with running the conference center.

Until our city council makes an effort to reduce our expenses in areas where we are obviously losing money, they should be ashamed and held accountable for passing on the cost overruns to the residents of Glenpool that they caused in the first place.

Fact:  The City of Glenpool is currently over $75 million in debt, according to the 2014 annual audit.

Fact:  Unless the City of Glenpool reduces expenses substantially and/or increases revenues substantially it looks like the City will not get out of this financial mess until the year 2039.

Fact:  Four of the current city council members supported the Big League Dreams sports complex (council member Ballew was not on the city council at that time) even though that project would have added about $18 million to our long-term debt AND raised our taxes!  Those two facts alone are reason enough to NOT vote for any council member that supported that tax increase election.

If our water rates have been increased due to the mismanagement of our tax dollars then just think what would have happened if our city council members (Korb, Agee, Fox and Ceesay) got their wish and added $18 million more to our long-term debt AND raised our taxes.  The residents of Glenpool could very well be paying even higher water bills and more taxes!

 

Glenpool City Council Elections – Vote for the Candidate that will Tell the Facts about Why Our Water Bills Increased and for the Candidate that has a Clue on how to Manage Public Funds Responsibly!

Who will be the candidate that tells the truth about why GUSA is and has been losing money for years?  Who will be the candidate that tells us about all of the cost saving ideas they proposed to implement PRIOR to raising our water bills?  Who will be the candidate that will propose to eliminate  ALL of the wasteful spending and reduce our expenses and city personnel to the point where they DO NOT need to force the residents of Glenpool to pay the bills?  Who will be the candidate that proposes to sell any asset that is costing the City money?

This upcoming city council election is important and we need council members that have a clue about eliminating expenses in order for the City to NOT be losing money.    Basically, the city administration wasted our public dollars over the last six (6) years and now the current council is making the residents pay for those irresponsible actions.

Vote for Korb?  Who knows? How has Korb eliminated wasteful spending?

Vote for Agee?  Who knows?  How has Agee eliminated wasteful spending?

Vote for Kearns?  Who knows?  How will he propose to get our finances in order?

Vote for Robinson?  Who knows?  He helped cause our financial problems but maybe he will propose the correct actions to get Glenpool financially stable once again.