Neosho City Manager Jan Blase told city officials that his decision to use a state loan earmarked for hangars to pay city bills was an ethical one, and that he also suffered from the effects of mold when it came to events surrounding the city’s use of that money, according to city documents released this morning.
Both statements were in response to questions posed during an investigation by Mayor Jeff Werneke and Mayor Pro Tem Richard Davidson. The question-and-answer sheet was part of a larger set of documents, which included previous audits, cash flow projections for the current fiscal year, and other written statements put out by Blase about the city’s sales tax revenue, that were discussed in closed session by the council last week and released to the media today.
In response to one question about whether anyone had raised any ethical or legal concerns about the city’s use of the state loan for city operations, Blase wrote: “It seemed ethical to meet the city’s obligations and then manage the shortage.”
The final written question asked Blase for any other comments related to the state loan or city finances that would “aid in clarifying events surrounding the use of STAR loan funds by the city.”
Blase responded: “I believe that excessive mold spore levels at City Hall severely affected the health of the finance director and the city manager and that the exposure to high levels of mold spores affected overall performance. The vents in the City Manager office were not hooked to distribution system and that forced all air in the attic directly unto the City Manager every time any unit turned on at the request of a thermostat.”
Asked for further information this afternoon, Blase told the Globe that “everybody (at City Hall) was sick” because of the mold, that he himself suffered from allergies, that he was “ill” for “many” months, and that he suffered from a “compromised” immune system.
Blase, addressing unnamed “skeptics”, also said he has documentation to show City Hall suffered from a severe mold problem.
But when asked if either he or the city had a medical opinion about the effects of mold, Blase declined to comment, citing the issue as one pertaining to personnel.
When asked how significant of a factor the mold played in the use of the state loan, he only referred the Globe to a two-page document that he presented to the council outlining the symptoms of toxic mold exposures.
Blase last month acknowledged that the city used a state loan reserved for construction of new airplane hangars at the airport to make payroll and pay city bills. In the wake of that admission, Werneke and Davidson investigated how fully advised the council had been of the city’s financial condition in recent months.
The pair presented the findings of that investigation last week, and after an hour and a half of closed session deliberations a motion to fire Blase was defeated by a 1-4 margin.
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<img src=" http://www.joplinglobeonline.com/images/zope/new.gif" border=0> Blase: Mold affected administrative decision-making
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