MUSINGS FROM THE CITY COUNCIL MEETING
4-29-08
Mayor Perkins seems intent on bankrupting the City's General Fund and spending all of the money in the City treasury BEFORE HE IS VOTED OUT OF OFFICE ON AUGUST 26. At the Council meeting Monday night, he proposed spending more than $1.3 million of the City's $2.4 million dollar cash reserved. The cash reserve must fund any shortfall in revenues between now and the end of the fiscal year September.
Since May, 2006 (2 years), the City's unrestricted general fund cash reserve has been reduced from $4.1 million to only $2.4 million. As the City SPENDS MORE than it receives, money is taken out of the reserve. When the City receives more than it spends, money is placed in the cash reserve.
Every year, EXPENSES always exceed income during the last 5 months of the fiscal year. WHICH IS TO SAY, THE CITY NEEDS $2-3 MILLION in its cash reserve to pay its expenses from May to September. THE MAYOR SEEMS INTENT ON BREAKING THE CITY BY HIS SPENDING PROPOSALS.
At the Council meeting, he proposed the following expenditures from the City's cash reserve:
(1) $742,077.00 for the Police Department (which the Council passed)
(2) $355,859.00 for software for the Administrative and Finance Departmens (which the Council tabled)
(3) $429,200 for repairs to Public Buildings (which the Council referred to the Public Safety Committee)
If the Council approves all three of these expenditures (the MAYOR AND HIS COUNCIL will continue to bring them up), THERE WILL NOT BE ENOUGH MONEY LEFT IN THE CASH RESERVE FUND TO MEET THE CITY'S GENERAL FUND EXPENSES FOR THE REMAINDER OF THIS FISCAL YEAR.
In addition, the Mayor presented another request for $250,000 to buy curb and gutter equipment for the public works department. His Public Works Director, Henry Hicks, presented a list of streets to get curbs and gutters. THERE WAS NO SURPRISE HERE. ALL OF THE STREETS were in Ward 8 (Venter), Ward 6(Leashore) and Ward 5(Randolph). Curbs and gutters right before the election TO HELP 3 OF THE MAYOR'S PUPPETS BE RE-ELECTED. Fortunately, the Council voted this down by a 5-4 vote. THANKS TO EVANS, MARTIN, WILLIAMSON, ALLEN AND CAIN for seeing THE POLITICAL MOVE FOR WHAT IT WAS. Our opinion is that a new Mayor should clean house of City department heads and that Henry Hicks should be the SECOND ONE TO GO.
The Council also approved a proposal for stripping streets to the tune of $109,000. Hicks presented this proposal in which the City had received only one bid. Previously, he had presented a list of streets to be stripped. NATURALLY THE STREETS WERE ALL IN WARDS 5-6-7-8. Only after Councilmen Williamson and Cain objected did he go back and add unstripped streets in those wards to be stripped. This expenditure and the proposed expenditure for the curb and gutter equipment-which the voters rejected on February 26 by voting against the Bond Issue-would have come from a gasoline excise tax fund.
What we are discovering is that the City apparently has much money in many different funds and has had the money for quite some time, but right here, 4 months before the election, the Mayor and his council are proposing massive expenditures to get themselves re-elected. Do Perkins, Crenshaw, Leashore, Randolph, and Venter think the people of Selma are such fools that the people don't understand what the Mayor and his puppets are doing?
As for the expenditure for the Police Department, what Perkins and Jimmy Martin have done to the Selma Police Department in the last 3 years is almost criminal. They have downsized, crippled, demoralized, mismanaged, and caused some 40 certified officers to leave the force. They have left the City virtually unprotected. They have abolished the drug unit. They have let the equipment become obsolete. They have abolished advanced training in the department. They have been incompetent, inept, and inefficient in their duty to protect the lives and property of the citizens of Selma.
We know this to be true because Chief Riley has been in town less than 2 months and identified almost $750,000 of needs that the department has and which he urged the City Council to approve.
We agree with the Times-Journal editorial in Tuesday's paper about the Council Meeting and especially the exchange about General Sherman between Leashore and Williamson. In the midst of a discussion about sending 25 of our young people to a Leadership Conference in Savannah, for some unknown reason, Leashore began to pontificate about how wonderful it was that General Sherman "came down from the Appalachians and through the Carolinas" to capture Savannah. This sheer ignorance of history by Leashore was more than Williamson could take; thus, he pointed out that surely this was not the way Sherman came to Savannah and every forth grader - but not Leashore - knows that. That whole exchange was unnecessary and had nothing to do with sending our youth to Savannah.
Mrs. Crenshaw managed to react in her usual haughty and hateful way when Councilman Cain asked for a list of the young people going to Savannah. We thought this was a reasonable request; however, Crenshaw said Cain could get their names when they came to the next Council Meeting and introduced themselves. This is typical of how hateful Crenshaw can be when someone asks a seemingly innocent question, as Cain did. It will be interesting to see how many of the young people are from Crenshaw's Ward and how many are from other areas of the City and County. Is she using the city government youth program for her re-election benefit?
Finally, we want to say a word about our friends at the Selma Times-Journal. We have certainly appreciated the editorials that Leesha Faulkner has written about city government. We agree with almost everything she writes. What we have a problem with is that the Times-Journal no longer covers the council meetings in person, but listens via radio. The downside to that is that the Times-Journal can not see Crenshaw and Leashore walk out of the council meeting for almost half an hour as they did Monday night or leave the meeting early as Crenshaw sometimes does. We wish the Times-Journal would cover these meetings with a real person - preferably Ms. Faulkner herself!
