All-
I've been here in the city for 8 years now and the City Council, Mayor and City Manager have forgotten their primary responsibility is to the existing community members who live and work here and not outside interests; not visions of grandeur; not projects which the public has to be deceived from understanding what and why; not congested roads; not higher taxes; but simply quality of life.
I was a City Councilman in the City of Woodinville Washington. It was similarly affluent, about half of the population and a similar number of jobs, just North of Microsoft Headquarters in Redmond, Washington. Elected officials have a basic obligation to represent the community first, and always to put the community first. This is where they've gone astray.
The Master Plan reflects interests in grandeur. It lacks a vision of transition in maintaining the quality of life for those of who are living here, in their Master Plan.
The City Council and Mayor hide everything. I follow issues closely. I am educated, I am a former official and I can see the hiding of so many facts from us, that it is nearly impossible with the amount of deceit, closed door discussions and lies, to understand what is true and what is not. I cannot understand many of their actions, especially when giving away tax dollars- tens of millions of tax dollars, without any known public benefit to private parties, through construction fraud, or a third party transfer through the Loudoun Water Utility.
The NORTHFAX project is a lie, it is a massive transfer of public funds to private owners- about $40 million. The transfer at Goose Creek was so bad, it could only be described as land fraud. I ran an appraisal service for 15 years as a business manager. The city was caught lying to the Washington Post about having done an appraisal by City Assessor Tom Reed, which is documented at my website, in an obvious land fraud costing us at least $78 million, maybe $300 million.
At Goose Creek we sold $108 million dollars of real estate, not our water system to Loudoun Water Utility for $30 million. Loudoun Water can now dispose of that land to developers without anyone noticing our loss. One HUGE question, is why is Loudoun Water Utility acting as a Real Estate buyer and seller?
Part of the problem is the election being held away from the date of general elections. The City Council can control the vote with as little as 8% of the voters doing this, as only about 14% voted in the last election. I had enough votes in a City half of the size to be elected here. A tiny number of voters control the electorate.
Our ex Mayor Silverthorne is standing trial for Meth Distribution, he was behind both NORTHFAX and Goose Creek politically. Silverthorne is even thinking of running again based on his facebook page.
We have Dan Ozilioli running as a write in, who is the only candidate who has never endorsed, or been endorsed by Silverthorne. It is quite a recomendation to have a Mayor on trial for Meth Distribution who endorsed all of the other sitting City Council persons and Mayoral Candidates Schmidt, DeMarco and Meyer.
We have overwhelming reasons to recall the city council under state law, for acting with negligence, misuse of office, or simply incompetence. One of their vulnerabilities in having nobody vote in elections, is that we need petitions for cause of only 10% of the voters who voted in the last election, or about 280 signatures. We have about half of that now for each of the councilpersons. Our petitions are at www.fairfaxtaxrevolt.org .
We have a movement of City of Fairfax Citizens First at www.FarfiaxCitizensFirst.Org with the platform issues and we need support for Dan in this special election and we need candidates who are willing to put in some time in community service to stop the fraud, waste, abuse and corruption (at least in Silverthorne's case). If you are interested in running in 15 months, in May 2018, or helping to fight the City Council please contact me at
mroskind@seanet.com . This is OUR community and this is what we expect from our elected officials and this is what a slate will be campaigning for between now and then:
Putting City of Fairfax Residents ahead of all else
Reducing Tax Burdens through efficiencies and common sense spending
Focusing on improving quality of life, investing in schools, recreational services and traffic improvement
Commitment to Public Safety
Sensible growth and not overdevelopment, which benefit our residents
Open government, transparency and accountability to the community
Ensuring City of Fairfax has a small town feel with access to outstanding services
I am a merit badge counselor for Citizenship in the Community with the Boy Scouts. I would tell the boys, we all have an obligation as citizens to participate, to vote and be involved. If not, democracy means nothing.
Mike Roskind
703-273-6587