By Count Friedrich von Olsen
With so many untoward reports about our county’s smallest and most remote city drifting into my ears, curiosity beseeched me to have my chauffer Anthony fill up the Bentley with the requisite amount of petrol and we embarked on the more than three hour trek from the chalet down the north side of the San Bernardino Mountains, past Lake Silverwood and through Summit Valley to the I-15 and thence out the I-40 to Needles. Along this last part of the journey, I had Anthony pull over so I could remove myself from my usual position in the back seat to instead ride up front and take in an unobstructed view of the panorama. Once so nestled, I must admit falling into something of reverie, harkening back, no doubt, to the passages in the adventure books imported from America that were read to me by my governess more than seven decades ago, which celebrated the Chisholm Trail and the Wild West. For a time, it seemed I was perched atop a stagecoach, ranging across the boundless Southwest…
Ultimately, we reached our destination. It gives me no pleasure to report that the tales of Needles’ current state were accurate, actually an understatement. The city, where the railroad came across the Colorado River in the late 1800s, was once, I am informed, the second largest city in the county and a grand one at that, having a special status conferred upon it by the railroad. The city, now numbering fewer than 5,000 mostly bedraggled souls, has lost luster. Indeed, for the most part it has fallen into an appalling state of disrepair…
I cut right to the heart of the matter and troubled Anthony to escort me to the Needles City Council Meeting, where the now fallen city’s public affairs are trotted out for display and decision-making. It was at this meeting that three of the council’s members – Terry Campbell, Linda Kidd and Shawn Gudmunson – would make their final full appearance as city officials, in that they had all three been voted out of office by the city’s voters on November 4. This is the same council responsible for bringing in a fellow by the name of Rick Daniels as city manager last year, just as he was being shown the door as city manager in the Riverside County city of Desert Hot Springs, which was itself flirting with bankruptcy. The Needles council saw fit to provide Mr. Daniels with a salary double that of his predecessor, apparently on the basis of his claims he could rejuvenate the city’s sputtering economy. Under Daniels’ watch, the city has expended taxpayer money to hire an economic development director, but its economy has eroded yet further, with the one grocery store in town having closed in May. City residents now cross the river to shop, with a resultant loss of tax revenue from the city and California to Arizona…
While the departing council members could not resist congratulating themselves for what they perceived to be a job well done, with outgoing Gudmunson and Campbell in particular touting their accomplishments during their tenure in office, some available fiscal data undercuts the basis of their pride. In 2005, the city had $1.5 million in reserves. This year, the city had what the council calls a “balanced budget” of $4.8 million, but its reserves have dwindled to $360,000. Their biggest accomplishment, balancing the budget, from my observation, looks more like a shuffling maneuver than a balancing act, what with the laying off of critical electrical utility workers…
One indication of the city’s dire financial circumstance consisted of its effort to utilize eminent domain to condemn the property of 14 of its residents and then seize it for what has not been a clearly enunciated purpose beyond the claim that it may be utilized as part of the city’s I-40 to Arizona 95 interconnect project. Included among those properties is land owned by the city’s mayor, Ed Paget, who was the only member of the council reelected this year. Reelected is perhaps not the right term. He had no opposition in the race. While the city and its law firm, Best, Best and Krieger maintain that the land confiscation is being done for the betterment of the city, several of the landowners have pointed out that the city already owns the land necessary for the traffic signals and other road improvements and that the property is being taken for future speculative purposes. My own examination of the agreements the city is asking the owners of the condemned land to sign leads me to conclude that they were drafted to provide the city with the future authority to take far more property than is needed for the completion of the interconnect project…
This apparent abuse of the city’s authority is accompanied by what I can only describe as an effort to provide favorable status to a select group of the city’s businesses, while ignoring, or in the case of the aforementioned landowners whose property is being confiscated, harming others. The group singled out for favorable treatment is the Needles Downtown Business Alliance. With Kidd being the lone dissenter, the entire city council voted to waive fifty percent of the city facility rental fees required of local 501C’s including the Chamber of Commerce and Needles Downtown Business Authority. The council further provided the Needles Downtown Business Authority, calling it a “local organization,” with a reduction in fees at the Jack Smith Park boat launch. The council dangled, but ultimately did not offer the same, reduction to local residents. The council previously imposed a $3 monthly flat tax on every utility user in town, rich or poor, making no exceptions. This most recent giveaway of public funds to the council’s favored private corporate 501C sixes rankled the voters, who in two years will be asked to reelect or jettison councilmen Tom Darcy, Tony Frazier and Jim Lopez..
Meanwhile, the personal affairs of these lions of the community charged with running the affairs of the public are no more impressive than their public acts, at least in a few cases. One council member’s business has severely cut back on the scope of its operations, laying off most of its employees, as it teeters on the verge of bankruptcy. Sadly, another councilman, according to sources, has a son in a Nevada jail, awaiting trial on a murder charge…