STRICTLY OUR OPINION
9-24-09
Mayor Evans should find out who is taking Rose Sanders' properties off of the nuisance weed and grass list. Our councilwoman, Dr. Newton, treats Ms. Sanders properties just like anyone else's in Ward 3, particularly those in the Riverview area. Dr. Newton turns them in to Code Enforcement, but they hardly ever appear on the list approved by City Council as nuisance properties, which would allow the city to cut the yards and lots and bill Ms. Sanders. The Mayor should find out who is removing these properties AND FIRE THEM! We continue to express the opinion that the Mayor is ILL SERVED by most all of the department heads, including Code Enforcement Director Daryl Moore, held over from the Perkins administration.
Why would anyone be surprised at Finance Cynthia Mitchell NOT knowing how much the city is paying an outside company to collect the city's sales taxes? The company has been doing this for 5-10 years, and yet Ms. Mitchell doesn't know how much the city pays for the service. We actually like Ms. Mitchell personnally, but she is in way over her head as a Finance Director. Any time a council member asks her a question, she reacts like a deer in headlights! She is not serving the Mayor well, particularly in this time of financial crisis.
While we are on the subject of Perkins appointees who wshould go, we want to add the name of the Personnel Director Ms. Val Jones. Ms. Jones' latest misadventure came when she recommended that the city hire an outside consultant-her long time friend Dianne Clark of Decisions Inc, of course- to be a consultant on adopting the city's new personnel manual. According to Councilman Bowie, the manual is already written and just needs reviewing before adoption and no consultant is needed. Thankfully, the entire city council voted against hiring a consultant.
We heard Councilwoman Benjamin again inform the public about Community Development, which has had a practice of asking the Council to approve a certain amount of money for a project and then having a cost overrun and come back and ask for more money. That was STANDARD OPERATING PROCEDURE during the Perkins administration. By overruns and change orders, the low bidder often turned out not to be the low bidder, but had the job anyway because his bid was the lowest a the bid opening. We believe that this Council has stopped this end run around the bid law. We continue to believe that Mayor Evans is not being well served by his Community Development, Ms. Griffith, another Perkins appointee.
Finally, we also wonder with Councilman Williamson if anyone in some of the offices in City Hall knows what they are doing. Why does the city have to hire someone at $67.50/hr to cross check business licenses? Doesn't the city know who is paying taxes and who has a business license? How hard is it to compare a list? And why do we have to hire consultants to write grants, review personnel manuals, and NOW WORST OF ALL, hire someone to negotiate a new franchise agreement with Charter Cable and audit Charter to see if they have been paying all the fees to the city they are supposed to pay. Isn't there someone in city hall who knows what fees Charter is supposed to pay and whether or not they have paid them? And we believe there is enough brain power on the City COuncil to negotiate an agreement with Charter- if the council wants to do that-without paying someone $16,000 to negotiate for the City with Charter. Frankly, we would rather see another Cable Company in town because there are so many problems with Charter's high prices. We hope the council will look into getting another cable company to come here and give them the franchise, or even look at the possibility of the city having its own company as some cities do. Anything better than renewing Charter's franchise for another 20 years......
As for the Bond Issue, until someone tells us what is going to be done with the additional $100,000 for the landfill, we urge citizens TO VOTE AGAINST Proposition 13 on the Bond Issue ballot.
We continue to be appalled at the evil, mean spirited and insensitive attacks on Rev. Tucker by the defeated and disgraced EX Councilman Johnnie Leashore. While Rev. Tucker serves the citizens of Selma and Ward 6 with this wife sick near death, the spiteful sore loser Leashore continues to verbally abuse and call Tucker names. This kind of vile rhetoric directed toward Rev. Tucker under current circumstances is going to come back on loser Leashore one day, especially, as Leashore continues to abuse the Lord's anointed, in direct contradiction of Scripture.
