Great "Balls" Of Fire!

The Martin Chronicles watched the $350,000 settlement of the harassment lawsuit in the City of Park Hills with great interest. Given the fact that Villa Hills malfeasant Mayor Mike Martin's personal-and now City-Attorney Toad V. McMurtry (of Gerner & Kerns) also serves as Park Hills' City Attorney, Villa Hills taxpayers should quickly lock up their wallets.

The circumstances in Park Hills are eerily similar to the current turmoil in Villa Hills.

• Both mayors were suing the residents of the City they were supposedly running to lead back in 2010 (at least Park Hills current mayor had at least enough integrity to admit that fact).
• Both town's mayors are possessed of great amounts of bluster and very small amounts of brain.
• Both town's mayors have been accused of harassing their police department leadership.
• Both town's mayors forced out police department leadership and triggered very serious lawsuits for doing so.
• Both town's mayors hired Toad V. McMurtry (of Gerner & Kerns) to serve as City Attorney (but we don't think McMurtry was the personal attorney of Park Hills current mayor).
• The Park Hills mayor has told anyone who will listen-and many who don't want to listen-that he and the Villa Hills mayor are "the only ones with the balls to do what needed to be done". Yep, whatever the hell that was.

Well, we don't know how much "balls" it took for the Park Hills mayor to harass the former Police Chief so badly that their City Council just approved a $350,000 settlement to that former Police Chief. Oh, by the way, $150,000 of that settlement came directly out of the pockets of the residents of Park Hills. What a totally unnecessary waste of other people's money.

The residents of Villa Hills should be mindful of the fact that the Park Hills settlement was tendered to resolve just one lawsuit. These residents should be equally mindful of yet another fact. That fact? Their "ballsy" Mayor Martin's outrageous behavior leaves five serious lawsuits still unsettled. Not one. Not two. Not three. Not four. FIVE.

While we're on the subject of the FIVE unsettled lawsuits, its worth noting that current City Council candidates Summer Berger and Dave Hilgeford helped trigger some of the litigation because of their own over-the-top behavior at Safety Committee meetings. Voters should remember that when casting their ballots on November 4.

Okay, back to the subject at hand. It's time for the tried and true "worst case scenario". Park Hills shelled out $350,000-$150,000 of which came directly out of the pockets of Park Hills taxpayers-to settle one lawsuit triggered by the "ballsy" behavior of their mayor.

Villa Hillians now need to do the "worst case scenario" math. FIVE times the Park Hills' settlement amounts to $1,750,000 (That's ONE MILLION, SEVEN HUNDRED AND FIFTY THOUSAND DOLLARS for the uninitiated). The amount that would come directly out of the taxpayers' pockets? $750,000 (that's SEVEN HUNDRED AND FIFTY THOUSAND DOLLARS for the still uninitiated).

That staggering amount is nearly ONE HUNDRED DOLLARS for every man, woman and child in Villa Hills. Or, TWO HUNDRED AND EIGHTY-EIGHT DOLLARS for every household in Villa Hills. Sort of makes the UNFAIR $40 PER CAR STICKER TAX that Martin continues to impose on the residents of Villa Hills-despite his broken 2010 solemn promise to repeal it-seem like "chicken feed", right?

Sure, it may not be that bad. But any reasonable person has to realize that it is going to be bad. Very bad. No road work. A broken police department. Zip, nada, nothing.

Here comes bad news, talkin' this and that.