BREAKING NEWS: E-MAIL WAR CONTINUES BETWEEN JOHN FRIEND AND THE MAYORS CHIEF OF STAFF

Steve,

If that is the case, she should have received an email from my adm assistant indicating that I was called out of town and asked if the meeting could be put off until Tuesday or the day before. In regards to the second meeting, I never was notified until the day before the meeting an again was out of town. Why is it that all the meetings appear to be on Fridays. Regardless, during the meeting with Conor and Dr. Adams, I made it perfectly clear that MAJOR reductions in operational funds, i.e. GF & Parks had to be considered. With that said, my absences in the meeting made very little difference when I strongly disagreed with Conor and Doc.

Now, that your fiscal year ending July 31, 2015 posted up cash declines in your operational funds as defined by your controller in the amount of $12,774,000 your mere 1.5 m reduction in the GF is a pimple on the proverbial buffalo’s butt. In regards to Parks, you know and I know that the revenues will be no more than 9.7 m and that is a stretch . .meaning that PF will be out of balance by 600k which is illustrated by the 7/31/15 year end loss in cash of 1.1 m. And, finally, the administration’s claim that you have received “clean” audits would support the posting of fund balances on the Indiana Gateway website which clearly indicates that in the first three years of your boss’ administration overall cash balances have DECLINED by $47,000,000. Generally, I do not include the comprehensive fund approach because many of those funds are fiduciary, i.e. accounts in the 600’s and 800’s but since Mayor Winnecke has floated the totality of those funds as accessible to make PAYROLL which by the way includes the Police and Firefighters pension funds then it is only fitting that an explanation of where did all of that money go over the three year period of time.

This administration is bleeding money and if the administration does not believe this, I suggest enrolling in Basis Principals of Accounting 201 & 202 . And in closing, if Mayor Winnecke thinks that the utility funds should be included as accessible to make payroll, I suggest that he review the provisions within the bond covenant where the utility is prohibited from loaning funds to third parties while bond balances are outstanding.

So, instead of wasting your time and mine, the GF needs an additional reductions of 6.5 m and the Park an additional 600k and I will relent considering the Bernie Maydoff approach concerning increasing the “Tax in Lieu Of” expense to the Utility. While on this subject, why are you hammering the folks in the County by increasing the cost of their Water & Sewer bills in this scheme to increase the GF revenues at their expense???

Should you have any questions, please so advise.

JOHN FRIEND

5th Ward City Councilman

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