It's obvious that the city is in the middle of a financial crisis, with the budget tens of millions of dollars out of whack, departments have been told to find places to cut and staff positions going unfilled to try to make up the difference.

Which makes today's pair of stories about city money even more disturbing.

First, we have learned, through our Freedom of Information Act filings, that the city decided to eat the cost of doing work on the McKean Road Sports Complex to the tune of $47,652—as of January of last year. The current total, with another 12 months of fees and costs concerning the environmental impact report, public hearing notices, records retention fees and the cost of staffers' time, has not been tallied, according to Stephen Haase, the director of the Planning, Building and Code Enforcement Department.

Not only did the city decide to eat the cost of the work, instead of sending the bill to the sports complex applicant—the Almaden Youth Association—staffers were directed not to reveal those costs when the Almaden Resident asked the simple question last May: "How much money has the city spent on the sports complex?"

Now, we can't say that everyone at City Hall believes this is appropriate. When the staffers themselves found out the AYA hadn't been billed and the city was going to write off the money as the cost of doing business, some of them hit the roof. "That would mean all the work we did last year was for FREE!!! I think that's outrageous!!!" read one of the emails. We agree. It is outrageous.

But what is even more outrageous is the fact that the city purposely decided to hide this money from public disclosure. Saying that the money would not be recovered, Haase suggested in internal emails that the city deliberately leave out that money in the total, and another staffer agreed to leave the total out, saying he wanted to "keep it simple." The simplest answer is always the truth.

So now that we know that city officials will lie, how will we ever be able to trust them? We've been trying to get straight answers about the city's involvement in the sports complex for more than eight months. It seems that the city answers whichever way is most convenient for the story it is telling at the time: The sports complex is a private project, or a public project, or a public-private project; the AYA will pay for it, or the city will pay for it, or the city and the AYA will pay for it.

All of the flummery has to stop.

A key question regarding this most recent discovery is who decided the city would write off the staff costs? According to the city's EIR review process, the only way to wave those fees is by a vote of the city council. We don't remember such a vote being held.

While there is nothing that states it outright, we have to believe that former District 10 Councilwoman Pat Dando has a hand in this. The sports complex was Dando's baby, and she did everything she could to make sure the project would come through to fruition. Dando was the driving force behind the city handing over more than $2 million in public money to the AYA for the project in the form of grants and loans, but she has never been straight with us about the funding. Every fact we have accumulated has come by way of public records we have had to fight to see.

It's time for the city to present a complete accounting of the money it has spent on the McKean Road Sports Complex.

Not-so-free speech

The second piece of news regarding the city's use of taxpayer dollars is the fact that the budget for Mayor Ron Gonzales' upcoming State of the City speech is $70,000.

When we reported last year that the cost of the speech was more than $52,000, we were stunned. So were the mayoral staffs of several major American cities we checked with to find out what they spent on the speech. Detroit, Baltimore, Indianapolis and Jacksonville, Fla., spent less than $4,000 combined for their State of the City speeches. What makes Gonzales believe that his speech is worth the salary of a city employee? Or seven city-sponsored homework centers?

To say that the gilded event is a colossal waste of money is an understatement. We think the city would be much better served with less fanfare for a speech and a diversion of the $70,000 to more critical needs.