Cities are known for their wasteful spending, but Kansas City, Mo. took it a bit too far – spending $15,000 on a youth mentoring event that never happened.
According to The Kansas City Star, City Manager Troy Schulte wrote a check for $15,000 to Ossco Bolton to plan a youth mentoring event, but the event never came to fruition. Bolton is affiliated with the non-profit POSSE Foundation, which works to identify, recruit and train student leaders to recruit multicultural teams to prepare for college.
Moreover, the money was given to Bolton in good faith that he would plan the event, but no official contract was ever written up.
“Every time there are these sorts of events, there needs to be a contract that says very clearly what the expectations are and what the recourses are of the city if those expectations are not met,” Danny Rotert, a spokesman for Kansas City Mayor Sly James, told The Kansas City Star.
Bolton didn’t even start planning the December 8 event until after he deposited the check in late October. He also failed on a promise to book world champion boxer Floyd Mayweather, Jr. for the event.
He did, however, use city money to fly to Las Vegas to supposedly convince the boxer to come to Kansas City for the event. While Mayweather, Jr. couldn’t attend, Bolton ended up booking his boxer father, Floyd Mayweather, Sr., and paid him $1,500 for his planned appearance.
Bolton also reportedly paid thousands of dollars up front for security, marketing and entertainment for the event, as well as thousands of dollars on purchases not related to the mentoring session.
According to the police report acquired by the Star, Bolton spent $450 at the gas station QuikTrips, bought $210 worth of swag at Today’s Mens Wear, ate 11 fast food meals, went to the movies twice, racked up a $683 cellphone bill and went on five Wal-Mart shopping sprees.
Bolton insisted to the police, however, that he spent all $15,000 on the event to motivate the teens to stay drug-free.
The city originally asked for its money back after the event didn’t happen, but Bolton told them it was merely postponed. It wasn’t until the city decided to cancel the event that they began to investigate Bolton for theft.
Because of insufficient evidence, Bolton was let off the hook. The City Council also voted to amend its ethics policies to prevent scams like this from happening again, requiring all financial requests worth more than $10,000 to also be approved by the City Council.
Red Alert Politics contacted the Kansas City Council Office and Mayor’s Office, but they were unable to be reached for comment at this time.
