MORE ON ST. PETERS AUDIT

Following up on the St Peters Audit, here are some excerpts from Rick Fischer, posted today on his blog site. Click here to go to the site:

http://rfischer-outsider.blogspot.com/2008/01/st-peters-is-dirty-city-part-1.html

Once again, we urge those who are interested in good government to go to Rick’s site and read his comments.
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(Excerpts...)

Appraisals not done:
The city is involved in a project known as Lakeside 370. As part of this project the city purchased 1552 acres of land, however, the city only obtained a formal independent appraisal on 249. 4 acres (or 16 % of the land purchased.) The audit states that "good business practices requires" an appraisal to ensure a reasonable price is paid. Montee failed to offer any evidence as to what was a reasonable price for the property.

Purchase from former Mayor Tom Brown's son-in-law:
As I reported yesterday, Montee noted that land was purchased from "a related party" which turned out to be Brown's son-in-law who received almost 3 times per acre what the other sellers received. The city did not obtain an appraisal to support the purchase price on this land. The Government Accounting Standards (GAS) under which Montee operates consider such a transaction "abuse."...

... I will finish the rest of my review in Part 2 in which I will point out other problems noted in the audit, violations of the law Montee failed to mention and misrepresentations by the city in an attempt to mislead its residents. When reviewing the audit one should also consider that former Mayor Tom Brown was not only guilty of "abuse" regarding the land sale but Montee completely failed to mention that Brown and the city were found to have unjustly interfered with a local business because the owner dared to speak out against Brown and the city. This could end up costing the residents over a million dollars. Couple this with the fact that Tom Brown's successor, Shawn Brown, is in federal prison for bribery and you get a picture that St. Peters is not a clean city but instead it is one of the dirtier cities in the region. Based upon the facts, I challenge anyone to claim St. Peters is a clean city. And I haven't even gotten to the rest of the audit yet.