Hull accuses city of ‘fear, greed and stinky politics’

That stench in the air you smelled this morning isn’t coming from Cow Town Road; it’s coming from Maricopa’s City Hall.

The odor is the result of stop-gap politicking of the first order. Citizens, taxpayers and voters in Maricopa should be outraged by this Council’s attempts to hide the shameful past attempts to secure political favors.

The supporters of this charade are circling the wagons, but citizens of Maricopa should not be fooled by the MA Maricopa, LLC agreement, and should not believe anyone who tries to spin it as “the right thing to do, because…” I can’t say it loud enough, or long enough.

This is really a bad thing and deserves a lot more attention than it is getting.

The city called the first of three hasty meetings on April 4 to do the stinky deed. That conclave was to regroup a tenuous situation involving a $1.9 million claim filed by MA Maricopa and represented, in part, by Councilmember Joseph Estes, who is also a developer and attorney.

Those in attendance conspired to presumably steal your hard-earned tax dollars and to take what they wanted with impunity, and to disarm the docile taxpayers’ knowledge of outright stealing.

This was accomplished on Tuesday at another hastily called meeting.

Councilmember Estes was absent from all three meetings and presumably wanted to avoid the rotten stench of pompous corruption and to avoid having to publicly claim a conflict of interest.

Aside from this, the plan to steal money from the taxpayer’s was moving forward in incremental steps as presumably planned.

Anyone who has read the articles in the local media, or has taken the time to follow this claim, knows that the premise of the case against the City is that undue delays were caused by the city, which caused MA Maricopa, LLC to lose money because they couldn’t open Legacy School on time.

As quoted recently in inmaricopa.com, I like to think of it as opening the flood gates!

At last night’s hastily called meeting a representative of Montessori School was present to learn how he can have similar deals like MA Maricopa. The question now is why this Council is giving away deals and raiding mom’s cookie jar? Why not for the businesses of Maricopa too?

For instance:
Every citizen and in particular the Chamber of Commerce, should be outraged.
Every business should be demanding a development agreement from the city with freebies, or dollar for dollar compensation – Montessori School is
Shouldn’t the city be giving away money to the businesses?
Shouldn’t the city provided concessions to the School District?
Shouldn’t all of the non-profits in Maricopa (churches included) be lined up outside City Hall to receive their payoffs?

Should taxpayers care if a Councilmember is involved in a lawsuit against the city?

For those of us who have the time to dig a little deeper, we quickly find that MA Maricopa and its cohorts could not have opened on time, regardless. This was all due to poor execution of a simple, yet faulty, business plan; nothing more.

It sure wasn’t the city’s or the taxpayer’s fault.

This “give away” by our City Council is absolutely outrageous! It’s about our Council giving preferential treatment, at the expense of taxpayers, to a developer who is getting infrastructure paid for by someone else – the taxpayers – on other properties owned by MA Maricopa. It is not about Legacy School but is a ruse to extort money from the taxpayers that I believe is illegal on several accounts.

This Council is psychologically under the spell of MA Maricopa; LLC (this time) and deliberately is allowing the devaluation of our community in favor of MA Maricopa’s self-interests. This raises important questions about your City Council’s motives and presents a dichotomy of self-interest over the public’s interests using fear and greed; something that our founding fathers of the Constitution tried to avoid at all cost.

Some members, namely, Councilmember Estes’ understands the inner-working knowledge of the Council. He understands how they can be manipulated to forego existing laws if conflicts arise with their social or economic agenda. He understands how citizens are completely disconnected with what is happening in Maricopa, how businesses are in a Catch 22, and how politicians expect taxpayer’s to take the blame for their mistakes and malfeasance. We are only seeing the tip of the iceberg and more arrogance by this Council.

Personally, I do not support any plan that allows MA Maricopa, and any future developers, to say, “I want” and to deliberately expect the city to usurp the statues, ordinances and codes of our city. I do not believe taxpayers should be held hostage, or be sued, if developers don’t get their way. The city planning department should not be expected to break the law for developers, or to do their bidding and not the communities.

I support education; after all that has been my life vocation. It is exciting to see the support by developers for schools and allocation of open spaces for our communities. In my opinion, after reading the claim filed against the city, however, it is highly questionable if this developer has education at heart as he and his cohorts claim. I believe it is to line the developer’s pockets at the expense of about $200 per taxpayer.

The agreement that was proposed by the city manager with Steve Northroup, Managing Member of MA Maricopa, LLC, clearly show that the city is lining the pockets of this LLC and likely other LLC’s connected to it. Why? At the evening last hastily called Executive Session and followed by an open meeting, I spoke to the council on behalf of all concerned citizens that want truth and integrity in government:

Mayor Anderson and members of the council, as you know myself and several other members of the community have expressed our disapproval of this settlement agreement. We see a frivolous claim for $1.9 million, and by my calculations, a settlement agreement that is in the neighborhood of $2.5 million to $3 million of taxpayers’ money.

We also see hastily called executive sessions and hastily called special meetings, and a rush to get this agreement completed. We see ties of this council to this developer. We see a developer who has never successfully completed any projects in our community, and this includes when Maricopa was in the county and not a city.

We are naturally skeptical. We ask you to stop rushing and to start communicating openly with the citizens of this community. We ask that you stop these proceedings and allow more sunshine on this agreement and a full public review.

We ask that you, at minimum, wait for the appraisals of the property and R.O.W. costs to come back and then hold at least one public meeting to discuss the total cost impact to the taxpayers for this agreement prior to passage. We ask you to do what is right for the taxpayers of this community and vote against this agreement.

This frivolous claim by MA Maricopa, sanctioned by the Council, will cost the city approximately $3 million and that does not include other costs that will be incurred by the city to accomplish this sweetheart deal.

Consider that the right-of-way must be purchased, the road must be constructed, a traffic light must be installed, and a variety of other infrastructure must be installed (water, sewer, data, telecommunications, etc.), this is the responsibility of any developer.

Of course, this doesn’t include “soft costs” such as engineering. MA Maricopa, LLC owns several properties in this rezoned area and this “gift” is paying for any and all future developments for other LLCs, also.

What a sardonic twist to “Shovel ready!”

Since the city will presumably no longer charge those developers who want “deals” instead of paying impact fees to build the infrastructure, where will the money be coming from? You guessed it, probably in a new tax or raising current taxes. So all developers have to do is not have a simple business plan; not follow the rules; not abide by the law, and this city gives away the store?

Does this stink?

Most residents take pride in their community. Corruption is not something to be proud of. It does not bring economic development. It does not impress a company or family wanting to relocate or live here. The claim that MA Maricopa has brought against the city has nothing to do with education or economic development. It has everything to do with greed. Regrettably, too many citizens are failing to recognize their local government’s penchant to abuse their elective power, their blatant waste of government funds and the incestuous relationship that developers have with elected officials.

There is something stinky going on with our government, but you all have a chance to make this smell go away. You have a chance to show that you have had enough; that you listen. You have a chance to show that you are on the right track. You have a huge stick to whack certain members of this Council.

Vote on May 20! Go to www.cityofmaricoparecall.com to learn the facts and how you can do the right thing.

Jim Hull is a community activist and resident of the Maricopa community of Province.

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