Haase, Leslie | Testimony transcript 11-19-13

Transcript of the Testimony of Leslie Haase

Date: November 19, 2013Volume: I

Case: In Re: Joplin Critical Investigation

Printed On: December 1, 2013

Holliday Reporting Service, Inc.Phone: 417-358-4078

Fax: 417-451-1114Email:[email protected]

Internet:

Leslie Haase In Re: Joplin Critical Investigation

417-358-4078

Holliday Reporting Service, Inc.

Page 1

IN RE: JOPLIN CRITICAL INVESTIGATION

SWORN STATEMENT OF

LESLIE HAASE

Taken on Tuesday, November 19, 2013, from 1:26 p.m. to 1:55

p.m., at the law offices of Juddson H. McPherson, LLC, 626

S. Byers, in the City of Joplin, County of Jasper, State of

Missouri, before

SHARON K. ROGERS, C.C.R.650,

a Certified Court Reporter and a Notary Public within and

for the County of Jasper, and State of Missouri.


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APPEARANCES

MR. THOMAS E. LORAINE

Loraine & Associates, LLC

4075 Osage Beach Pkwy., Suite 300

Osage Beach, MO 65065

[email protected]


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S T I P U L A T I O N

IT IS HEREBY STIPULATED AND AGREED that this Sworn

Statement may be taken by steno-mask type recording by

SHARON K. ROGERS, a Certified Court Reporter, and

afterwards reduced into typewriting.

It is further stipulated that the signature of the

witness is hereby waived, and that said Sworn Statement of

said witness shall be of the same force and effect as

though said witness had read and signed Sworn Statement.


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I N D E X

Page/Line

DIRECT EXAMINATION BY MR. LORAINE . . . 5-2

E X H I B I T S

(sic) - typed as spoken

(ph.) - phonetic


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1 LESLIE HAASE

2 DIRECT EXAMINATION BY MR. LORAINE:

3 Q. Ms. Haase, we talked last week. Do you

4 recall that?

5 A. I do.

6 Q. And I asked you to swear under oath and you

7 signed a Garrity warning. Do you remember

8 that?

9 A. I do.

10 Q. I'd like to remind you that you're still

11 under oath and we're revisiting a little bit

12 today in reference to a couple of issues,

13 okay?

14 A. Okay.

15 Q. And the first thing I want to ask you is did

16 you have to talk to anyone concerning what

17 you and I talked about in this meeting last

18 week?

19 A. No.

20 Q. Nobody asked you what you were doing here?

21 A. Nobody.

22 Q. Okay. And that includes Mr. Rohr?

23 A. Right. I don't even know if he knew I was

24 here.

25 Q. And I want to go ahead and continue that same


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1 understanding. Is that okay with you?

2 A. Yes.

3 Q. I would like to talk about several issues

4 today, and I'll just number them some odd

5 number 1, 2, 3, and maybe there's a fourth,

6 but the first issue that I'd like to talk

7 about is Lane Roberts is your Police Chief?

8 A. Yes.

9 Q. He's been here a long time. I don't recall.

10 A. Four or five years.

11 Q. When he came here he was set up to receive a

12 salary and then he was to receive some

13 benefits including a pension?

14 A. Yes.

15 Q. What oddity occurred for the certain period

16 of time when he came that you're aware of in

17 the term of his pension benefits? Can you

18 explain that?

19 A. I can, and I apologize, I've lost of track of

20 time a little bit with the tornado, my years

21 have gotten away from me, but it had to have

22 been before the tornado he called me and said

23 I think there's a problem, and I said okay.

24 He said I don't think that anything is being

25 deducted from my paycheck for the pension,


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1 and I said, oh, okay, hang on, let me look.

2 And I looked and sure enough it wasn't and

3 never had been since he started working

4 there. And he told me, he said, you know, I

5 never even realized it. He said the only

6 reason I realized it now is my wife and I

7 were starting to do some retirement planning

8 and he said I wanted to look and see, you

9 know, how much money I had, and he said I

10 started looking at my check and nothing was

11 being deducted. So I looked back to see what

12 had happened. In fact, it was an issue in my

13 office. We do the payroll and at the time

14 that Lane started I was going in between - I

15 had a new hire doing my payroll for me for

16 the City. But also the H.R. Department had a

17 new hire doing the payroll on their side.

18 They enter the information and then we do the

19 payroll. Anyway it was a bad circumstance in

20 the fact that both departments had new people

21 and when Lane came that deduction never got

22 attached to him.

23 Q. How long did this condition of not

24 withdrawing any payroll deduction from his

25 salary, how long did that last?


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1 A. It would have been from the time he was hired

2 until he called me.

3 Q. Well, give me a period of time.

4 A. That's what I'm saying I lose track of time.

5 It was before the tornado when he called me.

6 How much before the tornado I don't know. We

7 have all the records over there.

8 Q. Okay. What record would this be?

9 A. Once we discovered it - and this is not the

10 first case of errors in payroll, both on the

11 employee and the employer side. But when

12 that happens and people have to pay things

13 back - and in this case this particular

14 deduction is very odd because when the

15 employee retires or they terminate they get

16 all that money back so it is not - it goes

17 into a plan, but it comes right back out of

18 the plan when they leave. So I met with

19 Lane. Of course I informed Brian Head and I

20 informed the City Manager. But what our

21 normal practice is when we find an error, and

22 we find them from time to time, is we sit

23 down with the employee and we make

24 arrangements to rectify the situation. And

25 if we've overpaid somebody we always get the


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1 money back. In this case we drew up, I'm

2 pretty sure we drew up an agreement with him

3 on how it would be repaid. And obviously it

4 was a large sum of money he could not pay.

5 Nobody could have paid that out of their

6 pocket and he could not, and so we did the

7 normal standard thing that we always do, we

8 kind of look at how long a period it was done

9 and we look to see what he could afford out

10 of his paycheck and we made an arrangement

11 for him to repay it over a set amount of

12 time. And we did an agreement and we kept

13 track of it on payroll and then he actually

14 repaid it early. He wound up - we were

15 deducting the extra amount from his payroll

16 for whatever time period and then he wound up

17 writing us a check when it got near -

18 somewhere near the end he wrote a check for

19 the balance.

20 Q. So you're telling me it was repaid in full?

21 A. Yes, and we showed receivable on the books.

22 We did everything we were supposed to. The

23 auditors looked at it. I mean nothing

24 secret.

25 Q. Provide me the agreement, if you will.


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1 A. Yes.

2 Q. Now did City Manager Rohr have any role in

3 this episode that we've talked about?

4 A. No, it was me. Now I made the City Manager

5 aware of it and I made Brian aware of it and

6 told them what we were going to do, but to my

7 recollection it was all me. That's our

8 standard practice.

9 Q. And you think it was in excess of

10 $100,000.00?

11 A. I think so.

12 Q. I'd like to now go to the issue with Mr.

13 Steve Cope.

14 A. Okay.

15 Q. I think that's the Engineering Department?

16 A. Building Department which is --

17 Q. That's under the Engineering Division?

18 A. Yes.

19 Q. Can you tell me, there was an episode of over

20 $100,000.00 reported in the newspaper that

21 had not been collected in that department.

22 A. Right.

23 Q. Tell me about that.

24 A. Sure. What happened is our I.S. Director,

25 the Building Department evidently they wanted


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1 to get some little computers in the field to

2 do field recording, which our computer

3 doesn't accommodate. But also --

4 Q. Who was the I.S. Director?

5 A. Our I.S. Director is Mark Morris. And so he

6 knew that they weren't necessarily using the

7 computer system to its full capability so he

8 decided to bring Sunguard (ph.) HTE, that's

9 our computer company software, that's where

10 we get our software from, he decided rather

11 than before he spent money on hardware or

12 software he wanted to bring them in to do an

13 assessment. And when they came in to do the

14 assessment they ran a report that is open

15 building permit fees and open code

16 enforcement cases, and the open building -

17 and they wrote a report so there's a report

18 that gives all of this information which I

19 have.

20 Q. Would you provide that report to me?

21 A. Yes. So the report said, okay, you've got

22 open building permits of over $200,000.00 and

23 you've got open code enforcement cases of -

24 well, it said $200,000.00 and some, also. So

25 Mark once they put that in writing he brought


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1 it --

2 Q. Mark Morris?

3 A. Mark Morris, the I.S. Director. Once they

4 put that in writing he brought it to me

5 because it had to do with finances and we

6 reported it to the City Manager. And the

7 City Manager directed us, me, to look further

8 into it because it was just a report and I

9 could flip through it and see that, for

10 instance, for the school district we will

11 issue building permits but we do not collect

12 the fee, and I could see some on there for

13 them. So he directed me to look into it

14 further, so I did, and in doing that it turns

15 out that the $200,000.00 in open building

16 permits there were about $40,000.00 from that

17 report that I could tell we should have

18 collected but we did not collect. Now they

19 had voided ones, they had ones for the City

20 of Joplin and ones for the schools that

21 shouldn't have been collected. They had ones

22 that were mistyped like where they typed in

23 the address instead of the building permit

24 amount so it showed like a $40,000.00

25 building permit when that was really the


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1 street address, you know, just some errors.

2 But in the end on that report there was

3 $40,000.00 we should have collected that we

4 didn't collect. And then the code

5 enforcement report, what it actually did was

6 show a total and then it showed the amount

7 billed, and the way code enforcement bills

8 is, and code enforcement is mainly where the

9 City goes out and mows somebody's property

10 and then the fourth floor, which would be

11 Public Works, has to hit a button and send it

12 down to my office to send out the bill.

13 Well, on many of them they didn't hit the

14 button to send it down to us to bill so there

15 was $110,000.00 that just simply never got

16 billed in code enforcement. So that's where

17 the $150,000.00 comes from. Now since then

18 after Mr. Cope was let go we cleaned out his

19 office and found a stack of checks this big

20 (indicating) that he just sat on and never

21 deposited to the tune of over $10,000.00

22 worth of checks that he just - I have no

23 idea. He just never sent them through to be

24 deposited.

25 Q. And this would be of the $40,000.00 some?


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1 A. No, it would be on top of the $40,000.00.

2 And, you know, I had had trouble with Mr.

3 Cope for a long time. I could see that he was

4 not billing sign permits that he was supposed

5 to be billing and every year I would say

6 something. I honestly believe what happened

7 on the code enforcement is what would happen

8 our fiscal year end is the end of October and

9 it would get almost to fiscal year end and I

10 would look at the revenue in that lien and

11 say, okay, there's no revenue, you guys

12 haven't done your billings all year long, and

13 then they would try to catch up their mow

14 billings. And invariably I'm guessing they

15 missed some because they were trying to

16 backtrack and that's how they missed billing

17 a bunch of them. So he simply was not doing

18 his job and he was sitting on checks and you

19 cannot do that.

20 Q. Do you say that you have given him warnings

21 over a number of years?

22 A. Not me. He didn't work for me. But I talked

23 to the Public Works Director time and time

24 again.

25 Q. Who was the Public Works Director?


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1 A. It was David Hertzberg.

2 Q. Did you do any of that in writing?

3 A. No, and then I told the City Manager. None

4 of that was in writing. But I had other

5 witnesses, I mean. It was usually in budget

6 meetings.

7 Q. Now Mr. Hertzberg was relieved of his duties?

8 A. He was demoted.

9 Q. Was that because of this in your opinion?

10 A. It was because of this.

11 Q. And who did that, you?

12 A. No, the City Manager. He doesn't work for

13 me.

14 Q. Do you know if the City Manager had other

15 reasons? I mean if you know.

16 A. Well, in this particular case at the time

17 period that many of these issues happened the

18 City Manager had made his sole job duties

19 code enforcement and building, and so I think

20 that - I mean after the tornado he had given

21 many of the duties to Jack Schaller and he

22 assigned David solely to the Building

23 Department, and many of these things were

24 going on when David was solely responsible

25 for making sure that the Building Department


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1 was working like it was working. And you can

2 - I

3 mean --

4 Q. Did you make a recommendation to the City

5 Manager?

6 A. About Steve Cope. I said, yeah, I said he

7 has to go. We can't have an employee sitting

8 on checks. And I would do that again.

9 Q. Okay. Did you make a recommendation to the

10 City Manager about Mr. Hertzberg?

11 A. I don't know if recommendation is the right

12 word. I know that he talked about it with

13 several of us, Brian Head, me, the Assistant

14 City Manager, Sam Anslem, Lane Roberts may

15 have been in there at that point. I know we

16 all talked about it and nobody - I can't say

17 that I made a recommendation, but I did not

18 disagree.

19 Q. With Hertzberg?

20 A. That something had to change.

21 Q. Okay. But that decision was made by the City

22 Manager?

23 A. Yeah.

24 Q. Okay. What was the reason Mr. Schaller was

25 let go, if you know?


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1 A. He wasn't let go. He quit.

2 Q. Do you know why?

3 A. Well, Jack, himself, told me and of course I

4 have the payroll records, so Jack was

5 disciplined and he told us in the budget

6 meeting, me and our financial analyst that

7 goes to the budget meeting, he told us why he

8 was disciplined, which was when they were

9 hiring the Public Works Operations Manager he

10 said that the City Manager said that he -

11 whoever the number one pick was we had hired

12 him, he was getting ready to start, and he

13 came in before his start date and met with

14 Jack and Jack evidently according to what he

15 said, that he said bad things about the City

16 and then the guy called the City Manager and

17 backed out of taking the job so he got in

18 trouble. Now Jack told us that he didn't do

19 that, you know. I don't know what happened.

20 I mean I don't know. I only know what Jack

21 said.

22 Q. But Jack denies that he said --

23 A. He denies it and he told everybody what

24 happened.

25 Q. But did Jack say that he was screamed at or


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1 hollered at by the City Manager?

2 A. Not to me.

3 Q. Had you ever heard that, that he was?

4 A. That Jack was screamed at?

5 A. Yes.

6 Q. No.

7 Q. We talked about the City Manager's actions

8 along those lines before. Did you hear

9 anything more about the City Manager's

10 arguments or pushing episodes with his wife

11 at the office?

12 A. No.

13 Q. All right. We talked about one issue

14 concerning the tire matter where the City

15 Manager directed the tire company not to be -

16 I think it was Goodyear.

17 A. Goodyear.

18 Q. Not to be used anymore because they had

19 angered the City Manager. Do you have

20 records that indicate that they were, in

21 fact, not used any longer?

22 A. Yes.

23 Q. And what would those records be?

24 A. That would be --

25 Q. Is there a memo or something from the City


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1 Manager?

2 A. No, at the same time - the other piece of

3 this Building Department issue it was the

4 garage investigation and my staff looked into

5 - we already were going to look into the

6 garage for a different reason. We were going

7 to basically assess whether it's better to do

8 that operation in house or farm it all out,

9 and that's just an exercise that we do once

10 in awhile. We were going to do that prior to

11 the tornado and then our efforts got, you

12 know, redirected. But at the same time this

13 came out we were looking at the garage and a

14 piece of that was that came to light that we

15 stopped doing business with Goodyear and we

16 were buying our fleet tires from Firestone.

17 And my employee that was looking into that

18 called to ask the Police Department - because

19 remember she was looking in the garage and

20 there were issues in the garage. So she just

21 asked the Police Department why is the garage

22 getting tires from Firestone and not

23 Goodyear, and their answer was because the

24 City Manager said not to use Goodyear

25 anymore. And then he confirmed it.


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1 Q. To you?

2 A. To me.

3 Q. Okay. And did he tell you why?

4 A. Yes. Well, he told me why right after the

5 tornado.

6 Q. And the reason was they didn't give him

7 preferential treatment?

8 A. They didn't fix his car.

9 Q. Preferential treatment? Is that right?

10 A. Well, what he said to me they wouldn't fix my

11 car right away.

12 Q. Let me ask you a question. What document can

13 I see to show me that the purchase was no

14 longer at Goodyear?

15 A. I can get you that report, I think, that will

16 show you.

17 Q. Give me a report on that?

18 A. Uh-huh.

19 Q. All right. So I'm looking for at least two

20 reports.

21 A. I've got three things.

22 Q. What was the third one? I'm sorry.

23 A. The Lane Roberts information, the Sunguard

24 (ph.) report on this, and now Goodyear.

25 Q. Yeah. I'd like to go to the fourth area,


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1 that would be Fire Station No. 2, the

2 rebuilding of Fire Station No. 2.

3 A. Okay.

4 Q. I have been told that there was an issue

5 concerning a culvert, and let me expand that,

6 and equipment such as cranes and things of

7 that nature that had to be hired or rented to

8 handle the culvert and other materials of

9 that nature.

10 A. Okay.

11 Q. Can you explain the issue of the culvert as

12 you understand it to be?

13 A. There are two issues that I know about and

14 I'll tell you everything I know which is -

15 and I don't know which station is which, but

16 I think we had an issue at both stations.

17 Q. The culvert is at Station 2 so let's talk

18 about that one first.

19 A. Is Station 2 the one on 13th and

20 Schifferdecker?

21 Q. Yes.

22 A. Okay. I'm with you now. Okay, so that would

23 be the storm water issue.

24 Q. Yes.

25 A. So here's what I can tell you. After we


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1 purchased the property the Fire Chief came to

2 me and said, somewhere along the way he said,

3 we've got a storm water issue. He said, you

4 know, that was an issue with that property,

5 but Jack Schaller said it would not be an

6 issue. But here's the situation. We're

7 rebuilding these stations, both of these

8 stations with FEMA money, but FEMA only pays

9 you to put something back just like it was.

10 Well, we relocated both of these stations and

11 we're building them bigger than they were so

12 the City also has some costs in it so it's

13 part FEMA and part City on both fire

14 stations. We have a very tight budget.

15 Basically we can't go over budget, what we

16 budgeted for to rebuild the stations. I'm

17 holding everybody on all the FEMA work, I'm

18 trying to hold them to everything as best

19 that I can. And he came to me about the

20 storm water issue.

21 Q. This is the Fire Chief?

22 A. Yes, and he said Jack knew about it, Jack

23 said he would take care of it, you know, what

24 are we going to do. And I think I probably

25 talked to Jack at some point, I really can't


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1 remember, you know, that's what I do all day

2 long is talk to people about money. So what

3 I said, and this is also normal for us, we

4 have maintenance - we have a ten year parks

5 storm water sales tax and they asked me,

6 well, what can we do to make sure we stay in

7 budget.

8 Q. Who asked you that?

9 A. Mitch. I think Mitch and I can't remember if

10 Jack was there. It was different discussions

11 over a period of time, but it was all only

12 either me and Mitch or me, Mitch and Jack,

13 maybe David Hertzberg. Anyway I said, well,

14 the only thing that we can do is use storm

15 water and it's a storm water issue, we need

16 to fix it with the storm water money and we

17 can do it with our maintenance money and it's

18 not a problem. So as far as I know that's

19 what they've done. I have not double

20 checked. I haven't had time to go back and

21 see if that's what they've done. The issue

22 on the other station was something about the

23 street, and I only found out about this in

24 the last few weeks, something about the

25 street and as the fire trucks pull out


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1 there's a dip or something, and so there was

2 some concern from our Engineer Dan Johnson

3 that we needed to fix the street in order for

4 the fire trucks to pull out and it was going

5 to cost X amount of money, which I cannot

6 remember, but a fair amount of money. And I

7 think that's when I found out about that and

8 I started asking some questions about I'm

9 like, you know, what is this, what's going

10 on, because he was actually holding up

11 anymore work at the fire station until we

12 figured this out. And then I talked to

13 Mitch, our Fire Chief, on the phone, because

14 Dan was explaining it to me and I'm like Dan

15 was thinking, okay, we only have one ladder

16 truck which is a great big truck, it's our

17 biggest truck that we have, and he was

18 thinking that we were going to have a ladder

19 truck out there. The ladder trucks sit lower

20 than the other trucks and he was trying to

21 build it for clearance on the ladder truck.

22 And I said there isn't going to be a ladder

23 truck out there. The ladder truck is only at

24 Station 1. It doesn't go to any other

25 station. So I'm like you need to talk to


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1 Mitch because that's not right. You need to

2 see what fire trucks are really going to be

3 out there and see if they're going to work or

4 not before you do any extra work. So he did

5 and, in fact, the last I heard is that

6 they've determined that they don't have to do

7 anything to the street extra because of the

8 types of fire trucks that are going to be out

9 there. So as far as I know we're not

10 spending any extra money. And that's

11 everything I know about both fire stations.

12 I have not been very involved with either of

13 them.

14 Q. All right. Were you directed to use the

15 storm water money by Mark Rohr?

16 A. No, I think that was me that said that. I

17 don't even remember having a conversation

18 with Mark about it. And that's not out of

19 the norm. That's how we do stuff.

20 Q. Is the storm money, does that require an

21 authorization from the City Council?

22 A. No, because we always budget - it is

23 authorized because we always budget

24 maintenance for storm water and that was a

25 small enough project, from my understanding


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1 that was a small enough project to be some of

2 the maintenance money that we had.

3 Q. Well, that would be under $100,000.00?

4 A. Yeah.

5 Q. If, in fact, it was more than $100,000.00

6 that would be an improper use of the money?

7 A. Yes, if it's over $100,000.00 they should

8 have gotten Council approval.

9 Q. And Mark approved this project to be done at

10 some point?

11 A. Yeah.

12 Q. Okay. The culvert issue?

13 A. Oh, that I don't know. Because I never, ever

14 talked to Mark Rohr about this.

15 Q. Okay. Can you check on that to see if, in

16 fact, there was ever Council approval because

17 I'm under the impression that it was

18 somewhere around $99,000.00 or $95,000.00 for

19 the culvert and then there would be equipment

20 to use that culvert and done in house by the

21 City engineers and street workers.

22 A. Okay, if that's how they did it they would

23 not have to get Council approval. You only

24 have to get Council approval if they're

25 buying something or awarding a contract


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1 that's over, in and of itself is over

2 $100,000.00.

3 Q. The expenditure of more than $125,000.00 does

4 not count in --

5 A. Not in that way. Not if it was our own

6 labor.

7 Q. Well, not counting the labor, I'm talking the

8 rental of items like the cranes and things of

9 this nature.

10 A. Uh-huh, we see that as two - we always treat

11 that as two separate things.

12 Q. Well, how would anybody know what that

13 firehouse cost if you didn't assign it from

14 the firehouse budget?

15 A. Well, we would have it in storm water.

16 Q. Well, I mean what if there's another storm

17 water project?

18 A. We still have plenty of money left in storm

19 water.

20 Q. Did you ever hear the concept of paying the

21 money back to the storm water?

22 A. No.

23 Q. You don't know anything of that?

24 A. No, nothing.

25 Q. I'd appreciate it if you could check on that


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1 information.

2 A. Sure.

3 Q. And give me whatever you have on that.

4 A. I will, sure.

5 Q. So that will be the fourth item I'm expecting

6 from you.

7 A. Sure.

8 Q. Okay. I think that covers everything that I

9 wanted to talk about. Once again I'm going

10 to admonish you to try to not use anything

11 that we said in here in discussions outside.

12 If anybody does want to talk to you about

13 what you're doing over here then I want you

14 to please call me, okay?

15 A. Okay.

16 Q. Thank you, ma'am, for coming back to talk to

17 me.

18 A. Sure.

19 (SWORN STATEMENT CONCLUDED)

20


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REPORTER'S CERTIFICATE

STATE OF MISSOURI

ss.

COUNTY OF JASPER

I, SHARON K. ROGERS, Certified Court Reporter in the

State of Missouri, do certify that pursuant to the

foregoing Stipulation the witness came before me on the

19th day of November, 2013, was duly sworn by me, and was

examined. That examination was then taken by me by

steno-mask recording and afterwards transcribed; said Sworn

Statement is subscribed by the witness as hereinbefore set

out on the day in that behalf aforesaid and is herewith

returned.

I further certify that I am not counsel, attorney, or

relative of either party, or clerk, or stenographer of

either party or of the attorney of either party, or

otherwise interested in the event of this suit.

__________________________

SHARON K. ROGERS, CCR-650

Haase, Leslie | Testimony transcript 11-19-13

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Transcript of Haase, Leslie | Testimony transcript 11-19-13