Beginning to Think

Ok, so the quote of the night from last nights council meeting was "So after everything happening out at JB Wells we started thinking."  To protect the guilty I'm going to leave the names out.  But honestly I had to do everything I could to keep from rolling out of my chair.  My councilman shot me the "please quit laughing before I start laughing too" look.  I was just grateful the speaker was facing away from me and couldn't see me. 

So I'm assuming we're finally starting to think about JB Wells and how we operate it.  That the hundreds of thousands of dollars we've pissed away weren't enough to get the attention of those in our city offices, it took police and firing of individuals to finally get people thinking. 

I hope in the mean time all the other department heads are 'thinking' too.  That they realize that this is no longer an open checkbook town with a bottomless pit of being able to get anything they want.  I know that some departments have struggled over the years more than others, but even those have gotten 'luxuries' compared to our surrounding cities. 

We (our city) has to get back to basics!  If we don't need it right now we can't afford it.  And as I tell my teenagers, there are HUGE differences between what we want and what we need.  I would love to have a water system pumping 10x the water we have with great water pressure throughout town and lots to spare, with roads paved of gold and no potholes or dips that rip out the underside of my car, with roads like Ft. Wahl passable, with stoplights in sync, and great parks with walking trails, and St. George street finished, and our canoe trail finished, and and and and and....but some of these things are not needed right now (though some of them are).

Earlier this year, our city council sat down for weeks on end, working with the interim city manager and all of the department heads coming up with a budget of things that were necessary to run our town for this year.  Necessary being the key word.  Since that time we've added about $500,000 (that's right a half a MILLION dollars in expenditures) to that budget, with a 6 - 15 million project additional in that. All this with a budget that was already 1.5 million in the hole.  That alone was a tough amount to swallow.

So why are we continuing to spend?  Why are we adding non-budgeted items every meeting to our burden?  The item that was in question last night was honestly a partially budgeted item.  The city if finally purchasing some software that will track payments for the RVs, our city cemetery, and other elements of our city that have been run out of a shoe box in the past.  Of the $31,000 that they approved, $25,000 was budgeted.  It was the additional modules to run the RV slots and cemetery an a couple of other $$$ management pieces that make up the $6,000 not budgeted.  And honestly we've needed something there, but why didn't we budget for this 2 years ago, hell 5 years ago when we put in JB Wells? 

I'm hoping that our city listens to what was said and follows through, and honestly 'begins to think' about how we're operating all aspects of our city right now.

God Bless,
Dennis Nesser