"Does Anyone Know the Amount ???"

[countessofmidnight]

...I was wondering. What IS the Amount of Money ($$$$... OR ...) that has been spent over the Years by the Trumbull Township Trustees in their fight against the GLMF ?

Can Anyone enlighten me ? ---Many Thanks...

[Sir Trevor]

Nope.
No one here knows.
And as far as I know, all attempts to find such inforation through public records has failed.
Since they have been ignoring all requests for public records up to this point.

[Lady]

The news clips from Channel three said 60,000 I think, but I don't know if that's a reliable amount or not.

[Olive]

That $60k was ONLY since July 2008! Only for the past year. It must be much much higher for the many years of losing litigation.

[Mickey]

Unfortunately, (to borrow the line from the 'wise old owl) the world may never know. Besides the actual litigation costs, you would need to determine cost of time trustees have spent/wasted on this. As well as cost of meetings, zoning board, also, police writing/handing out tickets, etc., etc. It would be darn near impossible to calculate the full costs.

[Sir Trevor]

I'd be happy just to know what they spent on legal fees over the past 13 years.

[mumsies]

would larry be willing to provide the amount that the faire has been taxed...provided in the past few years?

[Sir Trevor]

Well, I can look up the taxes paid for this year without too much trouble.
All that is available on the county auditor's website.
Just by doing a property search for the name Rickard, I came up with these parcels with he name of Larry, or Lawrence. And the taxes paid this year for them.

570190000100 = $9259.68
570190000102 = $2389.95
570190000500 = $1608.72
570190001300 = $93.54
570190001400 = $1770.02
570190001600 = $1841.68

Which by my math comes to a total of $16963.59

That is just the property tax for 2009. (which is all Trumbull Township collects in taxes)
I have no idea what percentage of those taxes go to the township, the county, or the school district.

[Sir Trevor]

Doing some more poking around online, I found some more information.
Not real usefull, but interesting none-the-less.

You can read the financial audits for Trumbull Township for the years 1998-2005 here
www.auditor.state.oh.us/AuditSearch/Search.aspx
just type in Trumbull for the entity and select ashtabula for the county.

It doesn't give specifics, but you can get an idea of how much money they are playing with.
Example:
In 2005 they took in roughly $390,000 in revenue.
$310,000 of which was special revenue. (which comes from Road and Bridge Fund, Gasoline Tax Fund, Fire Levy Fund, Ambulance Levy Fund). Special revenue is supposed to be earmarked for specific projects.
Which left them $80,000 to cover everything else.

If the current years numbers are similar, then where the heck did they get $60,000 for litigation against he faire?

Maybe with some creative accounting.
Not making any accusations, or trying to slander anyone. Just asking a question.
Especially since every audit that I read had findings against the township for accounting and procedural errors.
And I also found this Star Beacon article from 2008 about some of their citations.
www.starbeacon.com/local/local_story_040235344.html

If anyone wants to find out more current budget information about the township, they will need to wade through the reports on this page.
www.auditor.state.oh.us/LGS/BenchmarksForLocalGovernments/SummarizedFinancialData.htm
The township PDF's are kind of hard to read. But the information is there.
Again, there is no specific information. But you can get the general info. (like in 2007 they had $85000 in general fund revenue)

[countessofmidnight]

Thanks for the Info, Dears...

[sue]

After reading the article in The Star Beacon I cna't belive the state isi wondering where the money came from for legal fees. What is the township claiming the money was used for? After all if $60,000 was used and they only had $85,000 to legally use what did they say the money was used for?
Also how typical the way Sherry Wilbur talked herself out of some real trouble however, I didn't understand what one thing she said had to do with other. I'm willing to bet dollars to donuts that she just figured she could get away with everything.
Never trust a backwoods judge or a Trumbell Township Trustee or government worker.