Different police cruiser issues just kept coming up in this meeting. Next item on the agenda was to surplus 3 old police vehicles. With little discussion city officials all voted yes to surplus them.
Next issue believe it or not was the purchase of 4 new police cruisers. Commissioner Galbraith expressed concern about purchasing Ford Crown Victoria which apparently are being phased out by the manufacturer. Police dept. spokesman replied that it saved two thousand dollars per vehicle because special equipment such a cages , brackets etc would be a direct change out with no extra cost just on these 4 police cruisers. Commissioner Fryman replied, “won’t you still have the extra cost in the future on all police vehicles?” The reply was “yes sir, we will.”
Mayor Thornton said, “why are we buying 4 new cars when we don’t know yet what we are going to do with home fleet?”
Mayor Thornton, Commissioner Galbraith and Horn voted “no”.
Commissioner Brooks and Fryman voted “yes”
Next issue was paying the monthly bills. Commissioner Galbraith questioned overtime in Police Dept. For the month it was stated there was 52% overtime. Part of it was explained by having 3 officers in school.
Another budget issue was with the Fire Department. Commissioner Galbraith questioned “why the retirement match was running at 67.7% when other departments were running about 35%?” The stated answer was this was under estimated during the budget process.
Again my fellow tax paying citizens, Where is all the money going?
Next issue was City of Paris Little League Program. There was discussion about getting the contract bid early mid-Jan in order to get an early start for Spring sign-ups. All agreed they would get it done by Jan 12th
Big Surprises happens to me toward the close of the meeting. Mayor Thornton gave assistant city manager a deadline of Jan 8th to give me answers to all my questions of the past several months that city officials have just ignored. He then turned and ask me was that ok.
Yeaaaahhh!! Finally they are acknowledging the public request.
Then City Manager Nagy looks at me and says, “Mr. Marshall I have a copy of the budget for you, and he then stated he had a copy of the budget on the hallway wall outside his office for all to see.”
It has taken several months of my persistence, but this is a small victory to get city officials to realize the public really does want to know what is going on in our local government.
Until next time,
Monday, December 28, 2009
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
keep it up. you are helping all of us when you ask about the budget.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the support. I just need each of you to spread the word, and be an advocate for transparency yourself.
ReplyDeleteThe city was supposed to interview for the police chief's position on December 11th. Any idea what happened with that? Did they pick someone already? What about the fire chief's position?
ReplyDeleteCity Manager Nagy has indicated that there has been a lot of applications recieved for both positions. I think they are doing phone interviews right now to narrow field down and then conduct face to face interviews with them. If they have done anything beyond that it was not stated in the commissioners meetings. Mr Nagy indicated that Andy Roe is Acting Fire Chief an Rick Elkins is Acting Police Chief for now.
ReplyDelete