The December 27 Tribal Council meeting may have evolved with an ulterior motive. The reason we say that is because the TA was missing along with the Comptroller and Vice Chairman Carlton Hendricks, Jr. So, Hendricks brought it up at last night ‘s meeting. Once again, millions of dollars being appropriated to the wrong departments. It was all under the guise of spend it or lose it. Trouble is it wasn’t going to the areas that would really benefit anybody in the Tribe, but two people. No explanation, no justification just rushed through without giving the council members opportunity to evaluate the appropriation.
Council Woman Roxanne Mills was the first to admit that it was a rush job. It didn’t make a lot of sense and now she said she regrets it. Honesty is the best policy in this case. The Chief said the whole thing was ridiculous because this happens repeatedly, and it represents poor management by the Treasurer and the Comptroller who is derelict in his duties.
Hendricks meanwhile asked for an explanation and got a doughnut. Once again, the treasurer Bobby Foster was robbing indirect cost funds and other grants to pay for David Weeden’s failure to generate revenue for historic preservation department. Instead, they ended up adding to his budget to pay his salary for two years totaling over $ 300 K.
Then there’s the Weetamu School. You know that boondoggle that eats up a lot of money. Ultimately Nitana got the $930,000 she was looking for to run the school that does nothing to prepare children culturally or otherwise to go out into the world. She seemed unnerved by the fact that she was busted.
The whole thing was such a complete reversal of the effort on December 27. The more interesting part was everybody or at least seven council members decided to go back and readjust the appropriation. For Magpie and Natana it was not good because they were depending totally on this money to pay their salaries. And for David Weeden if he loses the election, he doesn’t have a salary for the next two years. and Natana could be in bad shape too cause it all has to be redone, and salaries do not appear to be on the radar. The other component was the fact that the shellfish farm was never fully funded with the money that was appropriated. Several hundred thousand dollars was withheld and is still being withheld. The treasurer would not release the money. That meant that tribal members were unemployed. It actually gets worse people. We’ll talk about it tomorrow.
