On December 27, 2011, then City Manager Konrad Hildebrandt sent a post-Christmas email to all City Council members asking for their support against a citizen Angela Johnson’s request for documents about his suspicious $9,000 pay raise, and their help to “calm her troubled heart”. He specifically mentioned his “CC” to Mrs. Johnson, in what some believed an attempt to bully or intimidate her.
Angela Johnson had for months been writing, calling, asking questions of the Council, and GRAMA requesting information about a mysterious $9,000 raise to the City Manager. This raise was not discussed or voted on in any public meeting. She shared the email with members of Cedar Hills Citizens for Responsible government.
Upon careful review of Mr. Hildebrandt’s email, it was clear that he had made a huge, unintentional blunder. He had sent this email to the Mayor and City Council members’ personal email accounts, not their City email accounts.
See “Smoking Gun” email PDF: Smoking gun – KHildebrandt’s $9,000 pay raise.SecretEmail #3
This email raised many questions. We realized that there might possibly be many more illegal city business emails exchanges taking on personal accounts without being provided to the City record, as required by State Law. We were right!
Over 200 days of delay after our original March 5th GRAMA request, the City of Cedar Hills finally provided 6-7,000 pages/docs, under ORDER of the seven-member Governor Herbert appointed State Records Committee, which required the City to collect the records, most of which had never been provided to City Recorder, and deliver them to Cedar Hills Citizens for Responsible Government.
It was this “smoking gun” email by Hildebrandt that resulted in our now well-known March 5, 2012, GRAMA request for “all emails” between Mayor Eric Richardson, City Manager Konrad Hildebrandt, and the City Council, from “whatever email address”. (meaning personal and city email accounts) This will likely be a surprise to the City Council, as they probably had no idea that it was Hildebrandt’s December 27, 2011 email to them that initiated our GRAMA request.
As part of the pay raise related Secret Emails we discovered an October 5, 2011 email from Konrad Hildebrandt to Mayor Eric Richardson and Councilman Jim Perry, wherein he wrote:
“As we all know, Ms. Johnson is definitely a Korihor soldier.”
See attached PDF of the email… “Korihor soldier”.KHildebrandt.SecretEmail #3a
This is disturbing for a number of reasons.
- Korihor was an anti-Christ in the Book of Mormon who preached against Christ, led “many into wickedness”, was struck dumb, and was trampled to death. (See Alma 30) An anti-Christ is someone who fights against Jesus Christ — the author of all truth.
- Hypocritically, City officials were breaking the law with the illegal emails conspiring & hiding the truth, and were stalling a citizen who was trying to learn the facts.
- There is no contrary response or correction to the Korihor soldier claim was made by Mayor Richardson or Councilman Perry, that we could find in the follow-up emails exchanges.
- The City Council promoted and successfully campaigned at last November’s close election for the three new Council members, who had little prior Council attendance experience, if any, and were misinformed by Hildebrandt about the success of city and golf finances, who then as candidates promoted that same misinformation to the public, thus misleading the voters.
- May 1, 2012, Hildebrandt “resigned” along with the City Building Inspector Brad Kearl and City Recorder Kim Holindrake. Hildebrandt received a generous severance package of up to 9-months of his princely $155,000+ salary and benefits.
Had the new City Council appropriately fired Hildebrandt “with cause”, he would not have been able to claim a severance package, due to unethical behavior or worse.
Had Hildebrandt’s not informing the Council about the City loaning itself $1.7+ million dollars to keep the golf course afloat (see Nov. 22, 2011 Special City Council Meeting minutes – audio most interesting) been discovered sooner, the reportedly $100,000 in legal fees to defend him, Mayor Richardson, and Council, and deal with our Email GRAMA request, at taxpayer expense, may have been avoided.
Had the City simply obeyed the law, maintained the public record, been honest and open with their public related dialogue and actions, Cedar Hills citizens would have saved approximately $200,000 and all the embarrassing news reports about the numerous shady dealings and questionable actions by City officials in recent years.
Rather than being thanked for helping the City restore the public record, Cedar Hills Citizens for Responsible Government has been ridiculed and maligned by the City for our efforts to seek the truth and share it with you. We believe that the best way to insure a healthy financial and ethical city government in the future, is to expose the past to the disinfecting sunshine of the attention of Cedar Hills taxpayers. Correcting the record is an important part of our community’s healing process, and the promotion of intelligent decision-making in the future. It makes us stronger!
“Open, honest and transparent” Cedar Hills government? You decide. See support documentation PDF for more details… Smoking Gun – Secret Email Exposed #3 – “Korihor soldier” – support documentation
Be watching for the next “Secret Emails Exposed – #4”, soon to be posted at www.CedarHillsCitizens.org .