City Hall Elevator Rumblings #56
Rider #1: Just when we thought that things couldn’t get stranger with the city manager’s hysteria over the Baldrige award, we find out that a ‘private donation’ of $10,000, to offset some of the cost for council and staff’s trip to Baltimore to accept the award, was made by Larry Cunningham, directory of community and economic affairs for Irving. Even banking an annual salary of $167,508, one has to wonder: Did he personally donate the bucks or were they provided for him to donate? And if they were provided to him, by whom? Better yet, why?
Rider #2: That’s what I was thinking. Is it even possible he could be an active member of Irving’s Lubbock Mafia currently run by Capo Gonzalez? If Cunningham is a ‘made’ member of this group, then the group could be stronger and more secretive than most would want to imagine. However, he does seem to be dedicated to higher principles than goomba activities like having sporting ducats placed under his front door mat. Maybe this is why Gonzalez insists on omerta´ for his staff, or they are no longer members of his staff!
Rider #1: You are probably right. Cunningham was once the city manager of Lubbock and actually hired Gonzalez as his assistant city manager. So, they were all in Lubbock together with Delbert McDougal and his development group. Even Irving’s current chamber of commerce president, Chris Wallace, was on the scene at this time. Wow! If they were all kin, this would be a great Joe Francis flick: “Nepotism Gone Wild!” Instead, this appears on the surface to be typical mafioso social club activities by the Capo that even Tony Soprano would be proud of.
Rider #2: Since the Capo has never disclosed who made the original contact with McDougal to come to Irving to develop McDougalville in the Heritage District and then go on to leave town with a $53 million financial hickey on tax payers, questions remain. And if the subject isn’t Baldrige, the Capo maintains his ‘code of silence’ on all city activities where his finger prints might have been scrubbed, filed off or deleted on his Blackberry.
Rider #1: You can bet on one thing...I’m not going to question the $10,000 ‘private donation.’ Horse head blood on my bed sheets would surely throw the Mrs. into a panic attack. She still shivers at the “Godfather” movies by what can happen to a snitch. And to be extra safe, I’m going up to the fourth floor now and kiss the Baldrige ring on the Capo’s finger.
A note from counsel: These “candid” elevator conversations have been injected with fabricated nouns, verbs, adjectives, conjunctions, adverbs, modifiers and maybe a few dangling participles….Mark Holbrook
