“That’s very indicative of Dixon at that time.”īut now the shock of April had become the simmering rage of early May. “Have you ever heard the phrase ‘We grew up poor, but we didn’t know it?’” asked Matthew Lenox, who was 16 at the time of the arrest and now works for the Dixon Chamber of Commerce. Police had stopped using the road along the picturesque Rock River as a speed trap because no one sped there anymore: The rutted pavement damaged cars at high speeds. He did not take questions.Ĭrundwell’s arrest itself had begun to answer many of the more basic questions: why city budgets had faced such steep cuts for years why some municipal vehicles had holes in the floors and the ambulance spewed smoke why sidewalks were crumbling and pipes disrepaired to the degree that, within a few years after Crundwell’s arrest, a sinkhole would open up on West 7 th Street like some kind of ham-handed metaphor for disappearing taxpayer dollars. Burke vowed to help the FBI investigate and recover the assets. Yes, the city had struggled financially, then-Mayor Jim Burke acknowledged at the press conference announcing Crundwell’s arrest in April 2012, but Dixon was no different than many other communities around the country: Declining tax revenues, tardy payments from the state, rising health care costs and infrastructure investments all added up, he said, to a “plausible reason for the financial problems our community is facing.” Burke did not note that all of this had happened as Crundwell herself was building a nationally renowned horse-breeding empire, racking up awards and riches while only making about $80,000 a year in her day job. The bank that handled city accounts had never flagged anything amiss.
Dixon’s finances had not only passed annual independent audits but also audit reviews by the state of Illinois. What had so enraged the citizens of Dixon was that until late 2011, no one seemed to notice this theft – for some 20 years.
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