Wasilla

When Sarah Palin was 24 years of age, God started to speak to her, urging her to enter politics. So it came to pass. By 1992 Sarah had won a seat in Wasilla's City Council, where she stayed until 1996, when she decided to run for mayor of Wasilla on a platform targeting wasteful spending and high taxes. She also introduced abortion, gun rights and term limits as campaign issues.

During her mayoral administration most of the actual work of running this small city was turned over to an administrator at a cost of $50,000 a year. She had been pushed to hire this administrator by party power-brokers after she had gotten herself into some trouble over precipitous firings which had given rise to a recall campaign. During her 6 years as Mayor, she increased general government expenditures by over 33%. During those same 6 years the amount of taxes collected by the City increased by 38%.

Here are some highlights of Sarah Palin's time as mayor of Wasilla:

• Asked for updated resumes and resignation letters from some top officials, including the police chief, public works director, finance director and librarian.
• She required department heads to get her approval before talking to reporters.
• Inquired two or three times what the procedure would be to remove books from the library, citing the concerns of some voters about language in the books.
• Fired the city's librarian. Reinstated librarian following public outcry. Librarian had enough and decided to quit.
  
• Fired the Police Chief stating that she did not feel he fully supported her efforts to govern the city.
• Appointed Charles Fannon as Police Chief. Fannon gained some notoriety for charging victims for the cost of rape kits.
• Turned Wasilla into a wasteland of big box stores and disconnected parking lots.
  
• Spent more than $50,000 in city funds to redecorate her office without the council's authorization. 'I'm the mayor, I can do whatever I want until the courts tell me I can't.'"
• Built a $15 million sports complex which loses money every year to this day. It cost an extra $1.7 million in legal fees because building started before securing the title to the land.
  
• Blocked an effort to require the filing of building permits when her house was being built on Lake Lucille by Todd and his "buddies".
• She had her hand stuck out as far as anyone for pork from Senator Ted Stevens. Hired a lobbyist for Wasilla at a cost of roughly $140,000 over four years.
  
• Inherited a city with zero debt, but left it with indebtedness of over $22 million.

That's what the people of Wasilla had to put up with for six years. They are still paying for it. Alaskans still have about two to six years of Sarah Palin ahead of them.

What was God thinking???
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