Letter: Thrasher defends his story about improper Mayor pay ordinance

To the editor,

Mayor Heaton wrote a letter to the Nelson County Gazette denying there was corruption involved in the improperly passed mayoral pay increase doubling Heaton’s salary. What is frightening to me is the fact that nowhere in the article I wrote did I allege corruption. Why is Mayor Heaton felt compelled to take the defense on corruption when none was alleged? The article I wrote simply pointed out the facts that the pay increase was improperly passed, and was repealed after Gaye Ballard sent in open records requests and a complaint. If anything, if this was a simple mistake, the Mayor should be thanking Mrs. Ballard for pointing it out not going on the defensive about corruption when that was never stated. The taxpayers of Bardstown saved $120,000 by Mrs. Ballard pointing that out.

There has been allegations of corruption on issues before, this has not been one of those occasions. Perhaps the Mayor’s over reactive defensiveness requires this issue receive a closer look by the taxpayers of Bardstown. For anyone that thinks the mayor deserves that $120,000 additional money over the next 4 years I encourage you to add an additional $100 to your property tax payment. The law needs to be followed — it wasn’t this time and someone pointed it out. Kind of like when $750,000 went missing, the law wasn’t followed and it needed to be pointed out. We the people have a responsibility to keep an eye on taxpayer money, whether it is an oversight of the law, or outright corruption and theft in the case of the city’s CFO theft.

Mayor Heaton wants to make people that watch for taxpayers’ money into the bad guy. Just remember Mayor, we don’t get a salary for watching out for taxpayers’ dollars, you do. In fact you almost got an additional $120,000 for it.

Don Thrasher
Cox’s Creek