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Op-ed: Mayor is in a panic mode (by Peter Children)

“If it ain’t broke; don’t fix it.”  This is my first thought after reading through more literature than I really needed to.  Another saying now comes to mind as well…”For every season there’s a reason.”  The season that seems to be prevailing here in this city now is horribly wrong.

We have a mayor in office who is several things at once.  This is my opinion: He is inept at what he is doing, he is power hungry, he is a bully, with his staff and the general population in City Hall.

This mayor got his wish…he had three “locked” votes at the council; records show that in 2011 Hickey, Turncoat and Solberg voted with the mayor 93% of the time throughout the year.  When Marinos took her seat, he owned the city; Lee and Kuhn are inconsequential.

This mayor is in a panic mode; his waste to energy plan failed; he’s brought nothing to this city, his Economic Developer Brent Willett has brought nothing to this city, unless you want to count the “re-modeling” job being done on South Federal on the Harley Davidson building.

People who are in a panic mode are dangerous, they act irrationally in an attempt to beat the clock to the end of their term so they will have something to point to.  The word that comes to me from people inside who will remain unnamed say that the Fire Department proposal is really Bookmeyer’s deal and he has his mouthpiece Hickey fronting the proposal to reflect any adverse comments and opinions that might harm him.  The proposal that Hickey has on the table could end up costing this city a million dollars or more in the end. To accommodate eight hour shifts and remain fully staffed, you need to add about 20 plus additional personal that need to be trained and paid $40,000.00 plus another $10,000.00 in benefits. Ka-Ching $1,000,000.00.00. This is bad judgement.  Hickey says it will save money….it won’t.  Then there is the matter of the Union…again my inside people say the mayor wants it gone.

They want to build a new Police Station, a Civic Center, remodel City Hall, dump the Sanitation Department, re-do the Fire Department; I say sober up and slow down. This guy can’t do one thing at a time let alone 5 projects he has on his plate.  The real focus needs to be what is right in front of your face…industry which equals jobs.  Don’t talk about C.E.S. that was a unproven science and a  health risk this city could not  afford to gamble with…..no other city would let then in would they?  This mayor ran his mouth off in his State Of The City address; Pure Crap.  Talks cheap, takes money to buy whisky.

The best we could hope for is that he will leave things that ain’t broke alone.  We have a relativity new council; now lets see just how smart they are.  I see a glimmer of hope in Lee and Kuhn, unfortunately they need one more vote at that table to stop this purge of wild spending and sadly I just don’t see it being there. There was a time I held out hope that perhaps Hickey might be it, but that was only in my imagination   A famous philosopher once said; “There is nothing more dangerous than organized ignorance,” and we’re standing witness to that right here in River City.

Peter Children

 

 

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