Sunday, February 24, 2013

Can Quartzsite Survive Another Year of Laura Bruno?

On Tuesday, February 26th, the Quartzsite Town Council will meet to decide whether or not they should extend Laura Bruno's contract for one more year. I'm sure we all remember her infamous Sept. 14th press conference when she stated in no uncertain terms that she would be only be at the helm of the Titanic (aka Quartzsite) for 6 months. 

On Feb. 14th, at the Town Hall meeting, the panel was asked what efforts have been done to find a fully vetted and qualified Town Manager. Mike Jewitt admitted that they had taken no action to find a replacement for Ms. Bruno and left it at that. No follow up was given, no reason why the council and Bruno have changed their minds about finding a qualified a Town Manager, nada. 

Given that Bruno has been more of a hindrance than a help in moving Quartzsite forward, we have to wonder why the council is willing to stand by her side as she steers Quartzsite towards complete bankruptcy. We don't get the complete love fest with this woman. 

Let's look at the insurance situation for a minute. When the Council decided to put Alex Taft on administrative leave last August, the risk pool sent out their first warning that Quartzsite needed to follow the rules, policies and procedures or risk having a significant increase in premiums. If you do a public records request for any and all communication from the risk pool threatening to increase rates or cancel the coverage before the council took action against Taft, you won't find any. Why? Because the risk pool was fine with Taft in charge, and they knew that the actions of the council were exposing them to a claim by Taft. The risk pool never threatened to cancel coverage until Bruno was put in charge and the council repeatedly involved themselves in employee matters that the council members had no business (according to town code) being involved in.

Since Bruno made no attempt to salvage the relationship with the risk pool, and chose to do things her way, the Town is now without the lower cost for more coverage risk pool. We are also stuck with an insurance company that offers much less coverage for much greater cost. 

With the new insurance, we have $100,000 deductible. That doesn't cover legal fees, like the policy with the risk pool did. How many cases can Quartzsite take on without completely bankrupting the Town? Not many, if we are reading the budget correctly. Given the way the current regime operates, it is only a matter of time before the law suits start pouring in. Can the Town survive even a few suits at $100,000 each? We don't think so. 

Keeping Chief Gilbert around for a few more years ensures that the law suits will keep coming. In the 30 claims filed last year against the Town, Gilbert was listed in 29 of them. If the Town were smart, they would eliminate the biggest source of risk, and that would be Gilbert. But being smart doesn't seem to be in the cards for these bozo's. Read on, if you have a strong stomach. 

In a completely ridiculous move, Bruno told the law firm of Curtis, Goodwin, Schneider, Udall and Schwab to file an appeal of Judge Burke's December 4th decision. The case Burke heard was whether or not Al Johnson, Janet Brannan, and Nora Yackley could be represented by Brannan's husband and former Town attorney. Judge Burke agreed that Brannan did not have a conflict, and he could represent them. Judge Burke also ordered that Norma Crooks could not be on the Personnel Advisory Board because she is a current Town Council member. Town code prohibits the council from taking any action on employee matters, so being a member of both the Personnel Advisory Board and Town Council member is a clear violation of Town code. 

Rather than accept Judge Burke's ruling, and proceed with the Personnel Advisory Board hearings for those three employees, the Town filed an appeal in the Court of Appeals because Bruno really wants Norma Crooks on the Board. Given that the Advisory Board has no authority to reinstate any employee, we have to wonder why they are fighting so hard and spending so much money to keep Crooks there. If they could reverse Bruno's decision to terminate employees, it would make sense to fight this. Especially given the weak reasons given to terminate those employees, not to mention the illegal investigations done by Bruno's pal Tony Ford. I'm betting that the Town is scared that because the employees were wrongfully terminated, they know that they are exposed to litigation, so Bruno probably thinks having Crooks on the board, she can bully the other two members into agreeing that they should have been fired and maybe they won't sue. 

When Attorney Dave Ward asked Bruno why they are going to waste so much money and appeal Burke's decision, Bruno replied "this is to teach them a lesson." So Bruno is willing to throw money away appealing the decision to teach a few fired employees a lesson? On what planet does that make sense? So far the tab for this suit is close to $30,000 according to the invoices on the Town's website. If she had to pay for it out of her pocket, it would be different, but she's using money from an already financially strapped town to teach a few former employees that they shouldn't question her authority, they shouldn't mess with her pal Chief Gilbert. As that old saying goes- this ain't business, bitch. It's personal. 

Was this the plan all along? Did the council just play us all last September when they assured us we'd have a properly vetted and fully qualified Town Manager at the end of 6 months? Could someone bring up what a complete failure Bruno has been at the meeting on Tuesday morning? If anyone has a chance to ask the council why they are so committed to keeping Bruno around, could you please share with the rest of us? Because we can't figure it out.

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