Life in a small town

Our little (about 200 souls) hamlet stays nicely out of the news. Unlike the little (less than 500) town of Hampton, Florida. From the New York Times:

A Dot on the Map, After Scandal, Could Be Wiped Off
It�s easy for motorists driving down busy Route 301 to miss this speck of a city in rural north-central Florida: Fiddle with the car radio, unwrap a pack of gum, gaze out the window at the sunset and, whoosh, it�s gone.

And so it fell to the police to force hurried travelers to stop and savor the 1,260-foot ribbon of roadway belonging to this city. Hidden by trash bins or concealed in a stretch of woods, the officers � a word loosely applied here � pointed their radar devices. Between 2011 and 2012, Hampton�s officers issued 12,698 speeding tickets to motorists, many most likely caught outside Hampton�s strip of county road.

But, as it turns out, surprised motorists are not the only ones getting burned. So many speeding tickets were churned out for so many years and with such brazenness that this city of 477 residents came under scrutiny � and not just for revenue raising with a radar gun. Now, Hampton, an 89-year-old city, is fighting legislative momentum to wipe it off the map, after a state audit last month uncovered reams of financial irregularities, shoddy record-keeping and missing funds.

Some more:

In the audit, the city sometimes offered an explanation for its slipshod documentation. The reason, for example, that no water meter logbooks before April 2012 could be found was that they were �lost in a swamp,� the result of a car accident involving the water utility operator. (There was no accident report filed.) Those logbooks might have clarified why the city�s elder-care center did not receive a water bill for seven years and why three city commissioners went unbilled for 17 months. As for the city�s pre-1999 records, Florida floods were blamed for obliterating them.

More:

Even picking a mayor among the five Council members proved an ordeal. The post was finally filled last September, but two months into the job, the new mayor, Barry Moore, was charged with possession of Oxycodone with intent to sell. He now sits in jail awaiting trial.

More:

There was chatter about nepotism at City Hall. Jane Hall, the former city clerk, is the mother of the former maintenance operator, Adam Hall, who also ran the water system, and the wife of Charles Hall, a longtime city councilman. Her daughter also worked there for a short time.

More:

There were mutterings about vanishing city funds; personal use of city credit cards, trucks and gas; and trips to Ms. Hall�s clutter-filled house to hand over cash payments for water bills for which she offered no receipts. Some residents were threatened with the loss of water � the one utility controlled by the city � if they made trouble, Mr. Smith said. Auditors found that 46 percent of the city�s water went unaccounted for, much of it leaking through decrepit lines.

Holy crap -- the place deserves to be nuked from orbit. They are running a 46% water loss? I am president of our water board and anything more than 5% to 7% has our engineer scrambling to find and fix the leak. Glad to be living here and not there...