Charles Lynn – Town Administrator

March 8, 2010

Charles Lynn – Town Administrator
6389 SW 160th Avenue
Southwest Ranches, FL 33331

RE: Debits equal credits except when they don’t

Mr. Lynn,

“It’s not missing,” Town Administrator Charles Lynn said of the money.
“It was apparently used for operations.”
The Sun-Sentinel
Today
You

“Apparently?”

10 years ago somebody used $2,500,000 that was meant to build the town hall to pay the FPL bill. If not that then the best guess is that it went to make some swamp safe for gators and skeeters.

In my other life I was the Chief Financial Officer of a public company. At the irreducible minimum that meant I signed the 10K. That meant I swore that the enclosed was true. That meant that if I had capitalized operating expenses I would have begged the SEC to put me in the Witness Protection Program before the shareholders found me.

“A lot of money went up in smoke.”
Ibid

Did the township employees take marijuana breaks? Were they running a takeaway bar-b-cue business?

There is a good part of this story.

“On Friday, no one could say when the town borrowed the money.”
Ibid

Forget when. The question should be “From whom?”

Someone wired Southwest Ranches $2,500,000 ten years ago. It was supposed to be used to build the town hall. I see some items in your financial statements about debt service. It is not clear who this was paid to or what the terms of the loan were.




Logic would dictate that borrowers should line up at this loan window with huge swag bags. Lending practices like this would make Barney Frank proud. One thing is certain. Tony Soprano was not the loan arranger.

Maybe the town won the lottery. Maybe the 50/50s and the bake sale celebrating the birth of the town were hugely successful. I noticed an expense item totaling $12,000 to celebrate the town’s birthday. Did any of this money wind up in the hands of the Seminoles or Miccosukees? If so, what was the net return?

Since none of this happened on your watch your job is simple.

There is a $2,500,000 turd in the Southwest Ranches punch bowl. All you have to do is explain to the citizens why they owe this amount particularly since no one knows how or if it was spent. Is it too late to grab some of the Stimulus moneys? Surely there are some “shovel ready” projects around. Somebody has to know where the bones are buried. Dig them up.

The alternative is to tell the world that for years the town has been run by boobies on work release from the nearest hatch. I may be wrong but aren’t local financials filed with the state made under oath? What does perjury smell like?

Broward County has the distinction of having the most temporary Federal agents leading the most active investigations per capita of any county in the United States. Southwest Ranches is a very small town. Get everybody who is working there or who has worked there – including consultants, lawyers, accountants, insurance salesmen, grant writers, lobbyists, and assorted grifters – under oath. The first one to flip gets a pass entitling him or her – Are you listening Mr. & Mrs. Wasserman Rubin? – to one “stay out of jail card”.

If this is the way a town without a city hall and a zip code they share with a few other burgs runs its money I can’t wait for the government to take over Health Care.



Kevin Smith