{"id":10221,"date":"2021-02-08T22:18:06","date_gmt":"2021-02-09T06:18:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/?p=10221"},"modified":"2026-01-04T22:18:55","modified_gmt":"2026-01-05T06:18:55","slug":"opinion-pdas-awful-truth-and-its-documented","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/2021\/02\/08\/opinion-pdas-awful-truth-and-its-documented\/","title":{"rendered":"Opinion – PDA’s “Awful Truth and it\u2019s Documented”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mayor Dennis Thomas and (City of Placerville<\/em>) council members:<\/p>\n

You have received a letter from the board of the Placerville Downtown Association, claiming that it still represents its members and that \u201cmisinformation\u201d and \u201cspeculation\u201d are harming the PDA. I\u2019m a PDA member and I strongly disagree.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s why:<\/p>\n

Since Jan. 2 of last year the PDA board has held at least 13 meetings, none of which were noticed to the members. None of those meetings had more than four attendees.<\/p>\n

What did three PDA board members do at those exclusive meetings? Without consulting their members, they reorganized the PDA and spent most of its money in service of their personal interests.<\/p>\n

For example, last summer they authorized spending $6,000 of PDA money to support three ballot initiatives they liked. None of the measures wound up qualifying for last November\u2019s ballot.<\/p>\n

About the same time, they paid out $8,083 of members\u2019 money to settle legal bills that a totally different organization, Friends of Historic Hangtown, has run up while fighting the City Council here and in court. There is significant overlap between the faction currently running the PDA and the leaders of Friends of Historic Hangtown.<\/p>\n

More recently, the PDA authorized spending an additional $18,000 \u2014 which is nearly every penny left in its shrinking bank accounts \u2014 to oppose Therapy Stores. I\u2019m expecting news of PDA\/FOHH lawsuit any day now.<\/p>\n

The PDA also paid one of its board members nearly $3,000 in consulting fees in 2020.<\/p>\n

They\u2019ve spent more than $10,000, so far, on a new PDA website. The home page features the costumed members of the Hangtown Marshalls, including a PDA board member, striding down Main Street.<\/p>\n

The board also spent nearly $5,000 to rewrite the PDA bylaws and mission statement to emphasize political action and to make many Main Street businesses ineligible for membership.<\/p>\n

A single motive explains these actions: rather than promoting events and all of the businesses in downtown Placerville, this board wants the PDA to function instead as a combined political action committee\/litigation factory to serve its board members\u2019 private, political agendas.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the board has unilaterally withdrawn the PDA\u2019s longtime support of the Main Street flower baskets program and the annual Festival of Lights at Christmas \u2014 dropping those expenses into the city\u2019s lap and walking away.<\/p>\n

Every one of the decisions and expenditures I\u2019ve just described was made by three people, at meetings that no other PDA members attended or had notice of. I had to demand inspection of the PDA\u2019s accounting records and meeting minutes, and wait a month for a response, just to learn these facts.<\/p>\n

Bottom line, the PDA is deeply dysfunctional, out of control and nearly broke. That\u2019s not misinformation; it\u2019s the awful truth and it\u2019s documented in the PDA\u2019s own records.<\/p>\n

TOM CUMPSTON
\nPlacerville<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mayor Dennis Thomas and (City of Placerville) council members: You have received a letter from the board of<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"featured_image_urls":{"full":"","thumbnail":"","medium":"","medium_large":"","large":"","1536x1536":"","2048x2048":"","darknews-slider-full":"","darknews-featured":"","darknews-medium":"","darknews-medium-square":""},"author_info":{"display_name":"News MoLo","author_link":"http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/author\/admin\/"},"category_info":"News<\/a>","tag_info":"News","comment_count":"0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10221"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10221"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10221\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10222,"href":"http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10221\/revisions\/10222"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}