Applewood still rotten to the core.

Both on here and in my discussions with my friends I've opined about what I think the auditor general would find in Applewood and it's lottery grant. Well, the auditor general found that the Applewood Community Association didn't keep the proper records and that they couldn'd prove that the money went to where it was supposed to go. Armed with that knowledge, the government has ordered the Applewood Community Association to repay $20,000 of the $30,000 it was given.

Well in a story in the November 8, 2005 Calgary Herald, it would appear that the Applewood Community Association is refusing to pay the money back. A little background for those that may have forgotten the intrigue that is Applewood. Applewood is a community in East Calgary. It is part of my riding of Calgary-Montrose. The board of the Applewood Community Association is made up mostly of the same people who ran both disgraced alderman Margot Aftergood's as well as MIA-MLA Hung Pham's campaigns (not to mention running the provincial election in this riding).

To make the story even more interesting, Hung Pham's office helped the Applewood Community Association get the grants in the first place. So we have a community association, run by the local Tory party machine, getting grants from the government helped by a Tory MLA, the same MLA who generally can't lift a finger to help anyone else in his riding, to get money for an organization that lost it's charitable status because it couldn't prove where it was spending the money it was getting from the government. Now that they've been caught, outed by the opposition and the Auditor General, they're trying to circle the wagons and not pay the taxpayer back.

So in short, these people tried to rig one election, Probably rigged a nomination for the Tory party in this riding and are now allegedly guilty of misappropriating public funds. The depth of corruption these people will stoop to is amazing. It wouldn't surprise me if the money made it into either Pham's or Aftergood's campaign coffers.

Time will tell what will happen. Will Pham try to pull strings in Edmonton, with a larger opposition just waiting to pounce? Or will he try to distance himself from his strongest supporters and workers? Will the threatened legal action happen and will we as taxpayers get our money back? Inquiring minds want to know....