Posts Tagged ‘Virginia Beach Mayor Will Sessoms’

VIRGINIA BEACH – - Virginia News Source (VNS) has learned that only two members of the city council had enough knowledge to vote against giving Norfolk $250,000 for its light rail study.

Only 2 members had read any of the documents governing the resort city’s obligation to Norfolk’s light rail project.

Councilman Jim Wood, who is also chairman of the Hampton Roads Transit board, had never been able to get a copy of HRT’s original grant application until VNS requested it.

Councilman Bill DeSteph had read that and other documents before the issue was bought before council.

That is unconscionable: Councilman John Uhrin, Mayor Will(ing) Sessoms, Councilwoman Barbara Henley – who admittedly knew nothing about the contents and obligations outlined in the documents – were going to ‘blow $250,000′ tax dollars because Norfolk ‘asked.’ Because Sessoms and City Mgr. Jim Spore wanted them to.

Had they done this they would have been guilty of malfeasance in office – but they were stupidly blissful in trying to help solve Norfolk’s financial problems with our tax dollars.

Wrong grasshoppers! Next election you are going down. Future campaigns won’t be like past campaigns. There’s the Internet. There are citizen activists to challenge your every statement and position.

There’s a ‘New Day Dawning’ in politics here and across the nation.

No longer will your money alone be able to put your sorry asses in office.

Integrity. Responsibility. Honesty. Serving the public first. Transparency. Those are the qualities that most lying, currently serving politicians will have to square off against.

Try putting your records, statements, actions, and lies against that standard now and let us know where you think you stand. We may add out 2-cents worth.

Politicians who stick their heads up in public can expect to be held accountable or embarrassed for their arrogance and stupidity.

In the current flap over the funding of the Norfolk study, only DeSteph and Vice Mayor Louis Jones stood up for the taxpayers.

After meeting with the HRT chief the day before Sessoms was going to try to ram the issue through council, DeSteph and Jones alone got Phil Shucet, HRT’s top exec, to withdraw the request.

Oh, we almost forgot: There was a council transcript quoting the previous manager of the corrupt agency as promising the study would “not cost Virginia Beach” a penny.

Despite all the evidence, the council refused so signal in advance how it’d vote, except for DeSteph, Jones, Wilson, Dyer, and Diezel.

For example Councilwoman Henley, admitting she’d never seen any of the documents, said she hadn’t made up her mind before the request was withdrawn.

But sources tell VNS that she’d do anything City Manager Jim Spore wanted and Spore wanted her vote for giving away the tax dollars.

There is no evidence that anybody other than DeSteph might present information about the documents and there is no evidence that those who hadn’t ‘made up their minds’ wouldn’t have voted for the giveaway in total stupidity.

Only Jones, DeSteph, and VNS, stood in the way.

Townes

Michael Townes was protected in the operation of corrupt Hampton Roads Transit Authority by his black ‘posse’ of supporters who knew of his incompetence.  Knew he was incapable of running HRT and the light rail project.

The posse knew months before the HRT board found out that Townes had overspent his budget by $108 MILLION.  They knew it was behind schedule

They said nothing in circling the light rail project to protect the man because ‘he was a black brother,” inside sources have said.

“…the makeup of the board was heavily in favor of Michael despite the evidence.  I will leave it to you to guess why… facts unimportant to them and they had enough votes to keep him on,” VNS learned.

As we have always said about Townes, he rallies the posse at the least hint of a threat to him or of any criticism of his mis-management style.  The black posse’s role was to support his yelps of ‘racism’ as the excuse to cover his problems and inadequate ability to handle the job.

It wasn’t until after the $108 MILLION overrun was made public and officials began to take heat through the media that they were able to override the black posse who stood with Townes to the end.

Sources told VNS that Norfolk Mayor Fraim, Virginia Beach Mayor Will Sessoms and the city manager of Norfolk threatened to pull the plug on the entire project that the HRT board was able to force Townes out.

Why did he get his ‘black’ parachute of about $180,000 for a year?   Because he had a tightly written clause in his contract.

The HRT board was afraid to fire him because it felt that he would go public with his racism charge and take them to court.

He’d keep ‘good blackmail book’ on what he considered racist slights and the board felt it would cost more to fight him in court for the rights of citizens than it would to pay him off for a year.

Other officials said he should have been fired for malfeasance, misfeasance or investigated for criminal activity.  Under this scenario, the contract and ‘black’ parachute clause would have been null and void.

One official said, for the above reasons, “We were very fortunate to strike the deal we did.”

It was said, “Unfortunately, he had a severance clause that was air tight.  Although it may sink in the throat, sometimes just paying the severance is cheaper than a court case. He will never again have credibility, I fear.”

While no one disputes his value in turning HRT into a professionally managed agency, X-VDOT chief Phil Shucet took Townes’ job at $336,000 a year, adding to the already costly venture.

Here we are paying an incompetent $180,000 to get out, Shucet $336,000 to come in, and the project is sitting on a $108 MILLION cost overrun.  If this is good government policy, we’d hate to see what bad government would cost and bring us!

The original documents whereby HRT applied for and got grants of $25 and $50 MILLION, respectively from the state and federal government – leaves Norfolk responsible for all cost overruns:  One reason why it is trying to suck Virginia Beach into to project – to help minimize its loss exposure due to the mismanagement of the corrupt agency.

The original documents whereby HRT applied for and got grants of $25 and $50 MILLION, respectively, from the state and federal government – leaves Norfolk responsible for all cost overruns:  One reason why it is trying to suck Virginia Beach into to project – to help minimize its loss exposure due to the mismanagement of the corrupt agency.

Crying ‘racist’ is a familiar tactic.

Townes yelled like a harpooned sea lion in Nov. 2002, after VNS reported he’d spent $50,000 in tax funds to provide free bus rides to the polls for a transportation referendum.  (See:  http://www.veritas-solus.com/VNS/Archive/axtax_hrt.htm )

He plastered the buses with illegal campaign signs promoting the referendum which would have resulted in a 22% tax hike.

Most of HRT’s ridership is black, but Townes joined Norfolk councilman Randy (I should have had an abortion instead of giving birth to Light Rail) Wright.

VNS reported that normally politicians, primarily Democrats, give blacks a half pint of whiskey and a $5 bill to sell their votes.

Townes didn’t confront VNS personally (in fact no HRT employee would speak for the record), but he called a now-deceased, but at the time rabid black legislator to attack VNS as being racist.

But after it was pointed out that the VNS editor had worked for a congressman and knew of what he spoke, the vocal squealers shut up.  Didn’t want to expose many of the political control tactics they used to control lesser educated black voters.

VIRGINIA BEACH (May 3, 2009) – - It takes a lot of tax dollars to put words in the mouth of Virginia Beach Mayor Will Sessoms – his state of the city speech, cost taxpayers $21,000. Now he’s popped taxpayers another $4,735 for an outside consultant’s speech writing work.

Now Virginia News Source learns that Sessoms has spend another $3,533 in tax funds for 7 more little speeches none of which lasted over 15 minutes, but the taxpayers were billed for 38 hours of speech writing by Otto Creative Marketing Inc. $250, or almost 39-cents a page, more was billed for printing extra copies of Sessoms’ state of the city speech.

And did Sessoms run those charges through the mayor’s or city council’s budgets? NOPE: He billed it through the Virginia Beach Economic Development Authority. WHY NOT?

It’s less visible to the public over in that department and council can’t take any action against such expenses before it is an autonomous state agency.

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