This is truly bizarre. LMRFD chairwoman Deb Cass took this matter OFF the agenda at yesterday’s fire district board meeting. The board was to provide updates on the prosecution of Phillip Picard, but Deb refused any discussion.
That really leaves me wondering what chairwoman Cass is covering up! There’s something really wrong when a fire board member continually insists on NOT investigating and reporting on CRIMINAL activity. While this $24k payroll theft is not exactly small potatoes, I’d want to know what happened if it was only $240.
My previous post about this theft:
How could LMRFD chief Tony DeMaio NOT notice $24,000 payroll fraud?
I asked Deb WHY she voted AGAINST prosecuting Picard and she stated that he paid back what he stole.
So my next question for Deb is why she doesn’t care to find out HOW this $24k theft happened without chief Anthony DeMaio noticing.
WHY, Deb?
Here is the 5/14/19 Grand Jury Indictment:
2019-5-14–GrandJury-Picard
Picard’s arraignment was on 6/10/19 and he appeared telephonically as he now resides in Illinois and he was represented by attorney Troy Anderson.
Unfortunately, the court filing doesn’t include much info:
… Discussion ensues as to other cases that are pending, discovery and possible enhancement motions. The Court reads the charges, and advises the Defendant of the possible range of penalties involved. Discussion ensues as to any pending plea offer, and victim’s rights, if applicable. ..
The fire district should have had someone at the arraignment to report specifics. Picard plead NOT guilty! So WHO did it?
The pretrial conference is scheduled for next Monday, 7/1 at 10 am, and I hope “someone” will be there to report what happened.
From the Mohave Daily article:
… Picard wrote fire district board members on his own behalf expressing surprise that numerous time sheets had been submitted for dates and hours he did not work.
“I informed Chief DeMaio and Karen that I want to make this right with the district and reimburse whatever overpayment has been made,” Picard said in an undated statement that is quoted in Bauer’s report. “From the bottom of my heart I would never purposefully steal from the fire district and only want to make it right by paying all wages that were incorrectly paid to me.” …
If Picard didn’t “purposefully” steal the $24k, who did?
More realistically, how did Picard pull this off without chief DeMaio noticing?
Was DeMaio in on it?
How did Picard pay the $24k back?
Maybe chairwoman Deb Cass has some answers?
If not, why don’t you care, Deb?
Collusion and obstruction?
Trumpesque.
Hello Deb,
Your attempts to bury the Picard theft are very suspicious. I therefore request your comments regarding my post at [this page] and your explanation for removing the discussion of the Picard prosecution from the LMRFD agenda.
I also request that you add the Picard prosecution again to each agenda for updates until the matter is resolved and we all know what happened. You may not care how Picard pulled this $24k theft off, but the residents whose lives depend on LMRFD have the right to know how this happened, what the district has done to prevent future thefts and why you, the chairwoman of the LMRFD board, do not care to get to the truth.
Thanks!
Christine
Deb’s 6/26/19 response:
Christine
Thank you for your concerns but I don’t feel it’s appropriate to respond as one board member to the Picard matter. I can suggest you reach out to Administration, Karen who could help you with this.
Thank you,
Deb
Corruption is coming to Lake Mead. And behind it is Big Money. That’s what big money does with it’s big money is go out and make more big money. I know fire departments are corrupt because they pass laws that then the voting rules and make it legal for them to do illegal Acts bottom line is to further their profit. California is riddled with this problem all the way up to the governor Brown. You’re doing good work by exposing this sad part is I don’t know if there’s any way to stop them
Ted, I just added chairwoman Deb Cass’ response to my questions — she deferred to the minimum wage administrative assistant!
I don’t see this as being “big money” or any outside influence. I so wish I had saved the article about the corruption history of Mohave County. Do you know which Kingman park was built with illegal gambling money? There was even supposed to be a sign at the park.
Of course that IS another big industry, in the past for MC as far as I know.
I’ve seen how “our” Grapevine district was destroyed by the Meadview leadership. It’s NOT about money, it’s about POWER.
They didn’t like Tom Little, put in Steve Berg and the district was bankrupt a couple years later. That’s how Meadview operates.
And apparently Dolan is no different. Up until now Charlotte and Ellen prevented the worst, but it’s only a matter of time until they can’t do it anymore. While Ellen has only been on the board since last year, she’s been attending just about every meeting and she did so much work researching dire Meadview situation, with so few properties paying into the district.
You do NOT get paid to be on the fire board. Logically, few COMPETENT people apply for the job.
Joe is the nicest guy, but he has NO clue what’s going on. Larry is a nice guy too, but has absolutely NO background — never read any of my countless LMRFD posts, the minutes or anything else. And he disregards rules. After MONTHS of drama they finally got the new INTERIM chief who is doing a fantastic job, but that’s no reason to remove the “interim” after only 3 weeks.
Larry was very much against the new chief and he changed his mind after only 3 weeks. And it’s a GOOD thing to be able to change your mind and look at performance, but there was absolutely NO reason to do this, especially WITHOUT putting it on the agenda! Just let TIm do his work and do a review in half a year — whatever is in his contract.
It’s these types of sporadic nonsensical moves that can really screw things up.
And I so wish the board members got paid $500/month. Few can constantly put in 50 or more hours every month to research the COUNTLESS issues that HAVE to be researched without pay. Not only does that seriously limit the pool of QUALIFIED members, but you also end up with boards like ours, where a few do all the work, only to be outvoted. And then they don’t even get paid for the work!