Kingman vice mayor resigns after complaint from Route 66 restaurant

Rutherford's Diner, unfinished work

The vice mayor of Kingman, Arizona, resigned last week after a prominent Route 66 restaurant criticized him for his company’s unfinished construction job there, plus other problems, according to recent reports in the Kingman Daily Miner.

Vice Mayor Mark Wimpee resigned Thursday after Rutherford’s Route 66 Family Diner complained about the unfinished construction during the public-comment part of a city council meeting. The details from the Oct. 6 session:

Brent and Tammy Rutherford went so far as to ask the City Council to remove Wimpee as vice mayor after a contracting job between Wimpee and the Rutherfords went south after First Generation Builders, Wimpee’s contracting company, ran out of money without completing the job he was hired to do at the diner on Andy Devine Avenue near the post office. […]

Wimpee said his company has failed because of a conflict with an ex-girlfriend, for whom he built a dental office and used much of his own money to fund construction. […]

Wimpee also admitted he was unable to finish the job at Rutherford’s Diner, which included building a retaining wall, due to money issues. He did say the Rutherford’s made change orders that affected the contract.

Wimpee also offered to give the Rutherford’s a boat he restored that he said is worth $15,000. They declined the offer.

Wimpee and his ex-girlfriend were arrested on domestic-violence charges on New Year’s Eve. The charges eventually were dropped, but Wimpee filed a lawsuit against her over the unpaid bills for work on her building. Wimpee acknowledged that lack of money caused his construction company to go belly-up.

The unfinished work at Rutherford’s diner made its way to social media, and Wimpee became an object of scorn with many Kingman residents. Several Facebook posts from the restaurant’s Facebook page in September noted the deadline to finish the work came and went with little to no progress on the construction.

On Sept. 16:

Please disregard any advertising you hear or see about us having a patio as we do NOT have one and we were not able to cancel all of it!

On Sept. 23:

Past the deadline NO work in 7 days story after story nothing but a wall build wrong and a complete mess of my property and the lot next door and I have already paid $15,000 for this and it’s not close!!!

Both posts showed photos of the unfinished work, including the image at the top of this story.

Wimpee commented to the newspaper the morning after his resignation:

“There’s so much negativity surrounding me,” said Wimpee Friday morning. “I don’t want it to affect the city any more than it already has.”

Perhaps some of the social-media criticism was unwarranted (one city official was pretty sure a few comments came from people who never were customers of Wimpee’s).

However, if you stiff a popular local restaurant for construction work you were hired to do, you should expect withering attacks.

(Hat tip to Chris Hammontree)

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