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Councilman Goodwin

Fri, 02/19/2010 - 11:47am — john

I'm looking at the Bicknell newspaper and next to Love-A-Bears is once again a picture of our esteemed city councilman Gary Goodwin being released from jail on a work release program. I guess he owes $25,168.85 plus a fine of $1,000.00 and will repay it at a rate of $700.00 per month which seems a little

harsh because I would expect that he will find it difficult to maintain as he will at some point be required to pay for all of his children each month as well as provide for himself, at least at some point.


In my view if the crime was not enough to require jail time like a couple of years then why prolong the suffering by destroying him financially.
I of course have no way of knowing but it would seem that a Charge Nurse at Prairie Village in Washington would be paying less that the hospital did; but maybe not.


Gary is being released to go to work for the next few months and I suppose that he will be also released to fulfill his council duties as well; this means that he will be representing all of us from jail and work release, right?
I guess that he isn't the first man to rebuild the wife just to watch her disappear into the sunset on another man's horse; of course this is just my opinion.


My question is what is the council and mayor going to do now? They can convince themselves that the crime is not large enough to relieve him from duty over as they have been for months and months or they can remove him since most of the balance of his duties will be served from jail. Either way it doesn't seem to matter as the council is not inclined to be doing anything anyway.

Just some thoughts
John R. Stanczak
 

Comments

Sun, 02/21/2010 - 5:50pm — Anonymous

Resign

I am not an expert on the law, but Goodwin must have been convicted of something since he is serving time in jail and required to pay back the money he stole. If a person commits a crime while in office then he should be removed from office, in my opinion.

However, since that is not a requirement then Goodwin should resign. It is an embarrassment to the city of Bicknell to have a councilman working while in jail.

A man should be judged by what he accomplishes and by what he overcomes. Goodwin did not overcome anything. He still has to serve his time in jail, pay back the $25,000 he stole and prove that he will never do it again.

I do agree that $700 a month is a bit steep. I have no idea what Goodwin's income is, but I think this would be difficult for the average person to pay.

Sat, 02/20/2010 - 3:17am — Anonymous

As i see it, since he wasn't

As i see it, since he wasn't convicted of a felony then it doesn't really matter. he is only going to be in there for 3 months. big deal, give him a break and lets find another horse to beat on.

i think he made choices to repair something that as it turned out was unrepairable. lesson learned. does it really define who he is forever. a man should be judged not by what he accomplishes but by what he overcomes.

Sun, 02/21/2010 - 10:09pm — john

Give him a Break???

He actually committed a felony but for some reason I guess that the prosecutor requested less but that does not change what he did. Many people have faced unrepairable problems but didn't try to steal they way out. The question is what lesson did he learn, did he learn simply to not steal? Did he learn to respect others? Please advise me as to what Gary Goodwin has overcome.

When running for office he knew that he had stoled the money and he knew that he was caught but he didn't feel it necessary to withdraw from the council race; he took the oath of office when he knew what was down the the line legally and when everybody finally was informed of his short comings he simply hired the city attorney and clung to his post regardless of how the people of Bicknell felt about it. The republican party asked him to resign more than once but he refused.

Gary Goodwin has never been concerned with Bicknell but has and is only concerned with Gary Goodwin. He voted for every hike presented to the council except for one which of course was the one that would have cost him money by requiring him to pay for rental inspections.

Gary Goodwin fought against anything that would potentially make re-election more difficult for him, which is why he did everything in his power to stop the city from changing districts so that each council person would be required to rely on only the voters in their own districts and not the other three districts.

Gary Goodwin fought against creating a proper budget and chose to maintain the same spending policies every year that he has been in office and this explains why Bicknell cannot afford to repair its streets, sewer lines, buildings and vehicles. His choices directly effected the population of Bicknell by raising the cost of living here to the point that people leave and others do not come here.

In nearly seven years Gary Goodwin has not learned anything concerning his job on the council so why would anybody ever believe that he is capable of learning; so what lesson learned?

Accomplishments are that he assisted in putting Bicknell into a tail spin physically and financially with his unwavering ability to always choose the wrong path as a councilman which relates directly to his choice of rebuilding his wife with money that he did not have. This wrong choice cost him his family, cost him financially and stained his reputation but what he did to Bicknell in his two terms could very well cost Bicknell its town.

No a man who can learn, who is honest and who cares about Bicknell would have resigned a long time ago

John R. Stanczak