There’s an old fable about the scorpion and the frog. The story goes like this: A scorpion asks a frog to carry it across a river. The frog hesitates, afraid of being stung, but the scorpion argues that if it did so, they would both drown. Considering this, the frog agrees, but midway across the river the scorpion does indeed sting the frog, dooming them both. When the frog asks the scorpion why, the scorpion replies that it was in its nature to do so. (Wikipedia)
One could say the same thing about politicians. They mislead. It’s in their nature to do so.
Case in point is a letter delivered to mailboxes in Riverchase on September 29, four days before the October 4, 2016 runoff in Hoover City Council Place 1 between Curt Posey and Trey Lott.
The letter, shown below, has the following headline:
RECOMENDATION FOR HOOVER MUNICIPAL ELECTION Tuesday, October 4, 2016 Polls open at 7:00a.m.
After the headline, we see the following text: The municipal election cycle is not over! How much sales tax we pay; does free garbage, trash and recycling continue; what kind of police and fire service we receive; how is the annual $100,000,000 city general fund budget allocated; how much local support is provided for education; does Hoover implement an occupational tax? All of these are questions that the Hoover City Council controls!
There’s a couple of misconceptions in the text. First, it implies that the Hoover City Council can raise the sales tax. It can, but most candidates said they wouldn’t do so without a referendum by the voters. Ironically, though, Dr. Lott does favor a sales tax increase, whereas Mr. Posey does not:
He (Lott) favors raising sales taxes by 1 percentage point to raise up to $20 million a year. However, Lott said the city needs to get input from the school board and public to determine how much of that should go to schools, and he favors a citywide vote on the tax increase.
Posey is against a sales tax increase, saying it will hurt Hoover’s competitiveness with other cities. Instead, he wants to divert money from the city’s capital projects fund for the next couple of years to help schools and then start using revenues from the new sports complex to support schools. Hoover Sun, Sept. 29, 2016
Next up is the garbage fee. At the second candidate forum, Jon Anderson asked me if I was in favor of charging for trash and recycling pickup. My answer was very short: “No”. Mr. Anderson apparently wanted more than a “No”, so he asked me to elaborate. I replied with another “No”. Mike Royer, who was the moderator, asked “Mr. Schultz, can we take that as a “No”?”. The audience laughed, as should those reading the letter. Although the council does have the power to charge fees for this type of service, not a single candidate was in favor of doing so, including the person for whom this letter was meant to attack.
The next item deals with public safety. All candidates, including Mr. Posey, were in favor of keeping our police and fire departments as the top agencies in the state.
We’ll skip over the $100,000,000 budget remark, since that line itself is laughable.
Next up is how much local support is provided for education. During Mr. Bradley’s days as councilman, first 30% of sales tax revenue was given, which was then reduced to 16% . During Dr. Lott’s days as councilman, that 16% was reduced to 2%. Frankly, I’m confused why Mr. Bradley would support Dr. Lott if Mr. Bradley supports the schools.
The last line is again a tax to be used as a scare tactic. No candidate mentioned anything about an occupational tax.
The remainder of the letter is a love-fest of Dr. Lott and his qualifications over Curt Posey. Ironically, Mr. Posey has spent more time in city business over the past two years attending both council meetings and Board of Education meetings than has Dr. Lott. As I wrote before, I’ve attended almost every Board of Education meeting since 2007. I have NEVER seen Dr. Lott at any BoE meeting.
So where did this letter come from? Well, we’re about to take you behind the curtain and show you.
On July 29, 2016 all of the candidates received an e-mail from David Bradley. There was no text, just an attached Excel spreadsheet with questions. It was signed
| Listed below are questions that are being asked of ALL candidates for the Hoover City Council. The | ||||||||
| answers will be shared with other Hoover citizens. Our citizen group plans to make an endorsement | ||||||||
| for each Council position. Please answer each question, sign the form and return by AUGUST 4, 2016. | ||||||||
| Either scan the completed form and email to dbradusa@charter.net OR mail it to David Bradley, | ||||||||
| 2154 Baneberry Dr.,Hoover, 35244. | ||||||||
| Candidate Name: _________________________________ Seeking Council Place #: __________ | ||||||||
| 1. Why are you running for Council?:____________________________________________________ | ||||||||
| ________________________________________________________________________________ | ||||||||
| ________________________________________________________________________________. | ||||||||
| 2. How you decide which Council position to seek? ________________________________________ | ||||||||
| ________________________________________________________________________________ | ||||||||
| ________________________________________________________________________________ | ||||||||
| 3. How will the City be improved IF you are elected? _______________________________________ | ||||||||
| ________________________________________________________________________________ | ||||||||
| ________________________________________________________________________________ | ||||||||
| 4. How much additional money will you direct to the Hoover City Schools from the City of Hoover | ||||||||
| general fund, (indicate a specific annual amount)? $ _________________________ | ||||||||
| 5. Currently the City of Hoover has a balanced budget. How do you propose to provide any additional | ||||||||
| funding for the schools? | ||||||||
| _______ Raise taxes (identify taxes that will be increased) __________________________ | ||||||||
| _______ Cut city spending (identify departments or areas) ___________________________ | ||||||||
| ______________________________________________________________ | ||||||||
| 6. Who do you support for the other Council Positions | ||||||||
| Place #1 ____________________________ | ||||||||
| Place #2 ____________________________ | ||||||||
| Place #3 ____________________________ | ||||||||
| Place #4 ____________________________ | ||||||||
| Place #5 ____________________________ | ||||||||
| Place #6 ____________________________ | ||||||||
| Place #7 ____________________________ | ||||||||
| 7. Who is your first choice for Council President? __________________________________________ | ||||||||
| 8. Who is your first choice for City Attorney? _____________________________________________ | ||||||||
| 9. Which City departments would you recommend reducing staff or eliminating? ___________________ | ||||||||
| ________________________________________________________________________________ | ||||||||
| ________________________________________________________________________________ | ||||||||
| 10. List any specific current budget line items that you would vote to eliminate from future city budgets? | ||||||||
| _________________________________________________________________________________ | ||||||||
| _________________________________________________________________________________ | ||||||||
| _________________________________________________________________________________ | ||||||||
| 11. Each year one seat on the Hoover Board of Education comes up for consideration. During the next | ||||||||
| appointment would you vote to reappoint the incumbent OR replace? ____ Reappoint; ____ Replace_____ | ||||||||
| If replacing, provide the name of your first choice to serve on the BOE? ___________________________ | ||||||||
| 12. Who do you support for Mayor of Hoover? ____________________________________________ | ||||||||
| ________________________________________ _______________ | ||||||||
| Signed by Candidate | Date | |||||||
Now, questions 1, 2, and 3 are fair questions. Any candidate should be able to answer them without a problem. Then it gets ugly.
Question 4: How much additional money will you direct to the Hoover City Schools from the City of Hoover
general fund, (indicate a specific annual amount)? $ _________________________
First of all, that’s not something the council decides. That’s something the mayor decides in his budget, which the council then approves. That’s an inappropriate question.
Next up : Currently the City of Hoover has a balanced budget. How do you propose to provide any additional
funding for the schools?
_______ Raise taxes (identify taxes that will be increased) __________________________
_______ Cut city spending (identify departments or areas) ___________________________
Again, a totally inappropriate question. Without looking at revenues, and the total picture, such an question cannot and does not deserve and answer. But Mr. Bradley doesn’t stop there. He asks in Question 6 who the candidate supports in the other races. Since this was before the candidate forums, an educated answer could not be given.
Question 7 asked who the candidate supported for Council President. Without knowing the outcome, one could not give a good answer, which is the same for Question 8 regarding city attorney.
Now, with Questions 9 and 10, Mr. Bradley get’s his hands dirty. 9. Which City departments would you recommend reducing staff or eliminating? 10. List any specific current budget line items that you would vote to eliminate from future city budgets? Not worth responding.
Question 11 was the one that irked me the most. Each year one seat on the Hoover Board of Education comes up for consideration. During the next
appointment would you vote to reappoint the incumbent OR replace? ____ Reappoint; ____ Replace_____
If replacing, provide the name of your first choice to serve on the BOE? ___________________________ Prior to 2008, the way the Board of Education was selected by the Council was more of a “good ole’ boy” system. It wasn’t what you knew, but who you knew, so qualifications were not as important as connections. That changed in 2008 when we pushed for the Council to take applications, do public interviews, and select the most qualified individual. It’s obvious that Mr. Bradley is not familiar with the current system, as he is blatant in his old school (no pun intended) method of selecting Board of Education members.
Finally Question 12, Mr. Bradley wants to know who the candidate prefers as mayor.
My response to Mr. Bradley was limited to questions 1, 2, and 3. The rest, I explained, were inappropriate. Needless to say, Mr. Bradley endorsed my opponent in the election.
But, as Paul Harvey used to say, here’s the rest of the story:
I didn’t know Mr. Bradley, so I didn’t really take the questionnaire for what it really was – a way to discredit candidates Mr. Bradley didn’t like. Soon after receiving the e-mail from Mr. Bradley, we all received an e-mail from another candidate who DID know Mr. Bradley. It was addressed to Mr. Bradley, but copied to all of us:
David:
The most interesting part of Mr. Bradley’s response is: I probably will make additional small contributions but not enough to influence the election. That seems to imply that larger contributions can influence the election. Maybe in Mr. Bradley’s day they did.
The candidate responded to Mr. Bradley:
David:
My concern revolve around the second sentence of the questionnaire which starts with.
to which Mr. Bradley responded:
The endorsing group does not even have a name yet. If you need a person to be responsible, it would be me. A group of my friends and neighbors will be reviewing the responses. We will be under the campaign filing dollar threshold so it will be a simple endorsement for friends and neighbors. My plan is for All who support the recommendations will sign the endorsement piece. We may create a name for the group if we can all agree on the same recommendations.
So there you have the story behind the “endorsement”. But wait, there’s more!
You see, Mr. Bradley is not just a former member of the City Council. He’s also a current member of the City of Hoover Medical Board. They make decisions on items that deal with medical facilities needing funding assistance, and typically access to Municipal Bonds. Current members of city boards should, under no circumstances, endorse a mayoral or council candidate. It makes for bad working relationship should the person they endorse lose. Mr. Bradley might as well send another letter on October 5, should Mr. Posey win. That letter should be one that says he’s resigning from the Medical Board.
Under no circumstances should anyone who does not favor the style of Mr. Bradley’s tactics, including the type of questions he asks, vote for anyone other than Curt Posey on October 4.
Nobody should accept the endorsement of Mr. Bradley and his “neighbors”…unless, of course, it’s in their nature to do so.
Updated 10/1/16 to correct how a city can increase sales tax and what the purpose of the Medical Board is; add quote from Hoover Sun 9/29/16;