RIO RICO, Ariz. (KGUN) — She stole more than 38 million dollars in taxpayer money. Now former Santa Cruz County Treasurer Elizabeth Gutfahr is behind bars and the people who would have used that money to serve the public are working to cope with the theft.
When former Santa Cruz County Treasurer Elizabeth Gutfahr stole all those millions of dollars in taxpayer money, some of that money was supposed to come to the Rio Rico Fire District.
A judge sent Elizabeth Gutfahr to ten years in Federal prison.
She admitted she stole more than 38 million dollars Santa Cruz County Taxpayers trusted her to keep safe. The money went for fancy homes, luxury cars and much more.
Some of it should have gone for firefighters and equipment at Rio Rico Fire District.
“We would like to have additional brush trucks because of the wildland fires we have, so we have an aging fleet. So those are the kind of projects that get affected. Staffing does get affected. We had to do hold back on an additional three full time firefighters that we were looking at adding to the district, but overall, I mean, those projects don't affect service delivery.”
Santa Cruz County collects taxes for the fire district—and the district says it may have lost as much as $1.6 Million dollars over 10 years of Gutfahr’s thievery.
Chief Adam Amezaga wants to be very clear that the people of Rio Rico can still depend on the fire district and its protection but the missing money makes things more challenging.
Because Rio Rico has a Fire District, the people who live there serve on its governing board. Brad Beach is one of them. He serves on the local school board too so there are two places he has to cope with what Gutfahr stole.
“It was a school districts, it was fire districts, and I know that we lost about 1.6 million more or less and we didn’t account for that loss in our (fire district) budget.”
Firefighters learn to adapt to keep people safe when circumstances change. That’s how Rio Rico Fire is moving ahead while it waits to learn how much it may get from efforts to recover the money Elizabeth Gutfahr stole.
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Craig Smith is a reporter for KGUN 9. With more than 40 years of reporting in cities like Tampa, Houston and Austin, Craig has covered more than 40 Space Shuttle launches and covered historic hurricanes like Katrina, Ivan, Andrew and Hugo. Share your story ideas and important issues with Craig by emailing craig.smith@kgun9.com or by connecting on Facebook and Twitter.
