When my husband and I moved to Guadalupe in 1997 and bought our first home, we did so
because we saw potential.

This little coastal city was frozen in time and offered beach weather without a high price tag.

Granted, if the Guadalupe had a dollar for every time someone said they saw potential, the city’s money troubles would not exist.

While some are shocked at the vote to stop the Royal Theatre renovation, some of us are asking why the project was approved and started in the first place.

Having served Guadalupe as its first woman mayor from 2012 to 2014, I know exactly how the city mismanaged special funds (water, sewer, streets, lighting) operated prior to my term.

With the help of then-City Administrator Andrew Carter, we stopped that. Sadly, the city has returned to its mismanagement of enterprise funds shortly after Carter’s departure in mid-2016.

Mismanagement and misallocation are politically correct ways of saying that the city illegally used special funds to support the General Fund without formally establishing any loans or developing any plans for repayment — which can only occur IF there was a legitimate loan for repayment; this did not happen.

Many remember the raids of the Guadalupe Police Department in the 1970s and again in
1983 for corruption. It is time for a “fiscal raid” in Guadalupe, a reckoning.

It is time for the City Council and prior city administration to be held accountable and liable for their terrible actions, which include years and years of the ongoing, illegal transfers from the enterprise special funds to the General Fund.

During my term as mayor, we proved that the city can be run properly. Yet the city councils, city administrators and finance directors since then (current management staff excluded)
have commingled funds, worked without audited financials and ignored many grand jury
reports dating back to 2003, along with a State Controller’s Office audit.

Never mind the numerous times over the last 30 years that projects were poorly managed or the grant funds that had to be repaid.

The aforementioned parties are fiscally ignorant, and do not have the capacity to understand their responsibilities and the long-term consequences of their actions when
money is missing from these funds.

They lack integrity; they are not even embarrassed by what they’ve done.

Guadalupe touts its disadvantaged status to obtain federal, state and local grants, courtesy of the taxpayers and other donors, but does not treat that funding as the precious
resource it is.

Instead, those funds allow them to play a shell game, that ends with those taxpayers and donors being defrauded.

Some will recoil at the use of my choice of words. That is exactly what I want.

This City Council, prior councils, those elected since my departure plus the management staff need to be held accountable to the full extent allowed.

The City Council needs to take responsibility for the mess it has created and start doing the hard work is is elected to do.

Either that or council members should officially throw in the towel and start the disincorporation process because they apparently lack the ability to understand basic finance principals and the integrity required to sit at the dais.

During my term in office, we proved that you don’t have to steal from special funds to run
the city.

Guadalupe has a structural budget issue that needs to be addressed forthrightly,
not through a culture of willful and knowing mismanagement.