The Martin Chronicles staff sat around the conference table, exhausted from just 77 days of covering the fiasco that we laughingly refer to as the Martin Administration, sharing observations about Wednesday’s dreadful meeting. Then our publisher is gracing us all with a couple of days away from Martin’s mess to enjoy Christmas with family and dear friends.
· You don’t need to be a weatherman to know which way the wind blows with Special Counsel’s investigation of Martin’s conduct. There would not have been a two hour-plus executive session if Mr. Taliaferro and his staff had nothing extremely substantive to report.
· Layer on to that the fact that when council returned from executive session they voted to expand the investigation. Special Counsel will soon be questioning employees. We hope the interim city clerk has retained legal counsel of her own.
· Wednesday’s meeting provided more evidence-as if we needed any-that the bumbling Martin couldn’t manage a Whippy-Dip shack. How can a city meeting last until past one o’clock in the morning?
· County Judge Executive Steve Arlinghaus helped put a big exclamation point behind the sentence, “The Martin Chronicles really doesn’t like you!” by taking the podium, calling the special counsel investigation “a witch hunt” and bloviating that he thinks as a resident “it is a waste of money and I don’t see the big deal about Mayor Martin not having an occupational license for his business.” Yeah, other than the fact that Martin has been evading county and city taxes. Frankly, who gives a rat’s (EXPLETIVE) what Arlinghaus thinks? Isn’t Arlinghaus the guy who threw buckets of questionable mud at long time public servant Scott Kimmich? Talk about a baseless witch hunt. And isn’t Arlinghaus the guy who had to be shamed into paying his very-past due city license fee by The Whistleblower Newswire. Birds of a feather, we guess. What a (EXPLETIVE)(EXPLETIVE)!
· Everyone agreed that no one has to squint to read between the lines to understand Councilman Kilburn’s statement about the audit. Kilburn used the qualifier, “based on the information we have been given (by Martin, Schaber and Pope), this is a clean audit”. This is quite a departure from Mr. Kilburn’s effusive statements about previous audits.
· While we are on the topic of Mr. Kilburn, The Martin Chronicles is convinced he is frantically trying to position himself as a reasonable successor to Martin. Kilburn’s problem? He is trying so desperately to straddle the fence he has emasculated himself. He has turned a lot of people off. Mr. Kilburn should remember that most critters playing in the middle of the road simply get run over.
· So the KLC attorney representing Villa Hills was dead wrong when he opined that the judge would toss out the whistleblower and hostile work place elements of the police officer’s lawsuit against Martin? That’s a big old “surprise”. If council is smart they will minimize the taxpayer’s exposure by settling and leaving Martin and his co-defendant Dale Schaber to fend for themselves on the libel, slander and defamation claims they face.
· The Martin Chronicles salutes Greg Toebbe and the Ethics Board for publicly admitting their Open Meetings violations. Finally, a group that is willing to walk away from Martin’s Third World Dictator-style of mismanagement. There is hope for a post-Martin Villa Hills.
TOMORROW: A special message from the publisher of THE MARTIN CHRONICLES.
