01/26/10 Commissioners Meeting

The wait is over for those of you who wanted to known who the new Chief Police of Paris would be.  At their Tuesday morning meeting, the mayor and all city commissioners voted yes to hire Kevin Sutton.  After the vote Mr. Sutton told city officials, “thanks so much for the opportunity and I will work hard for you”.

It was stated by City Manager Nagy that “Mr. Sutton had retired from Lexington Police Department were he was an Assistant Police Chief”. He also stated “Mr. Sutton has a college degree and F.B.I. training.” “ He still has a commitment to police work and wanted to be considered for this job”.

Commissioner Fryman stated about Mr Sutton saying, “he is very experienced in all aspects of police work starting out as a patrolman with the Lexington police force and worked his way up through the ranks of Sargent, Lieutenant, Captain and then Assistant Police Chief”.

Another item on the agenda was financial business. Commissioner Galbraith ask several question about financials of the general fund. Certain line items he was calling attention to the fact of discrepancies of actual vs budget.
The mayor responded to Mr. Galbraith, “the budget was very very generic until we got on board”. When Mr Nagy came in he started appropriating the right line items, with the right numbers”.

After the mayor made this statement I was very surprised, so I held my hand up to ask permission to speak. The mayor allowed me to speak. I ask the mayor was he suggesting that prior city officials never had a line item budget?

The mayor responded “it had line items, but it was very very generic and that was probably the best words to use for it”. “It actually had line items that we saw huge increases in the police and fire that was due to budget numbers not having FICA match, retirement, health insurance which increased the budget about        $ 500,000.00
City manager Nagy added, “the copy of the budget he gave me the last meeting probably had 4 times the detail of the budget he was given last year.”

If you can believe what the mayor and city manager said about the budget, at this point I have no reason to doubt them, this is a totally unacceptable way to keep track of our tax dollars!

How can they effectively run our city without a detailed line item budget for each department? Who is responsible for this outrage if not our city officials? I encourage all of you to speak out with me. It can make a difference.

Another item of interest will be a special meeting Wednesday Feb. 3rd at 8 a.m.
The topics of discussion will be the Baseball Contract Bids. Another will be on the final reading on Usage Policy for Police Cars.
And a personal favorite of mine will be the discussion about High Weed/Grass Ordinance with a possible     1 st reading to take place. If you want to have any public input on these topics you should attend this meeting.

Until next time,