Ricky Part 3

Will the real Trustee Morales please stand up?

I can't count the number of times Mr. Morales has erred in the last year.  It all started when Bonnie Alicea stood up to a board meeting to address him.  She asked him "To Trustee Morales, did you review the budget before you passed it?"  Mr. Morales was dumbfounded.  It took fellow board Trustee Swinkunas to come to his rescue, referring to the document packet that was left up front for anyone's review.  When Bonnie questioned why it was not given to each Trustee before the meeting, the answer was that it was too much paper.  (Too much paper for the Trustees to pass over 2 Million Dollars every other week to print, or too much for them to argue, or too much for them to read... we will never know).  But Bonnie countered that with "Why can't it be emailed or posted online?"  At this point Mr. Morales asked Bonnie, "Will you be attending every meeting?"  The crowd of Rogerites exploded in applause at Morales' attempt to stop a citizen from asking them, the local government, questions.  Bonnie waited for the applause to die down before answering, "if it is to fight for our transparency, then yes I will". 

A year later we look at her effort as courageous amongst a corrupt government that tries to hide within secrecy.  To stand up to a machine, at the age of 34, and a mom of a two year old, to demand answers to her community and her taxes is incredible.  But we have to ask ourselves, are all the board members corrupt?  We started to focus on the individuals, starting with the one Trustee that was trying to stop us from asking questions.  This story will give you a true tale of Mr. Morales...

Mr. Morales received his first position on the board after another member stepped down.  At the next election, he accepted a great deal of money from Roger to run and win the Trustee seat.  (Enough that someone could have bought a very good car for that amount!)  Two weeks ago at the Village Board Meeting, Trustee Morales made another huge mistake.  He lied to the taxpayers that pay his salary.  He claimed he did not attend fancy dinners costing tax payers hundreds of dollars during a budget crisis.  Robert Bowen then presented an invoice for a $100 per person lunch Ricky had with Roger and another $50 per person dinner Ricky had with Roger.  Ricky was uncustomarily silent when presented with his own invoices for reimbursement for $50-$100 lunches at our expense.  This put Trustee Morales into a tight bind.  He was caught in a lie. 

Ricky has to run and WIN to get his spot back now.  Later this week we will be discussing the Village finances, and we want to clarify why you voted for Mr. Morales for his position and answer the question, "Did he do what he promised and did he do his job"...
Most people do not know that Mr. Morales is a V.P. at a bank.  He supposedly understands Finance more than most of the residents.   Had he examined the bonds, would he have passed so many of them and put us $468 Million dollars in debt?  If he did know he was passing them, did he know what this was going to do to the residents?  And more importantly, what was in it for him?  It appears that most social events attended by the Mayor recently included him as a partner.  The investigation begins...