Did the current Mayor not seek re-election due to the fact he continues to court an ailing and now deceased third Carbon County, Montana Commissioner’s position?
Did the current Mayor not seek re-election due to the fact he continues to court an ailing and now deceased third Carbon County, Montana Commissioner’s position?
The budget meetings have been tedious and I feel that efforts to save more money are futile. Two members will vote against the proposed changes. Comments were discussed about repairs that need to be done in the Town. One person commented “It took years for the potholes to get there and it will take time to repair them.” We have had two maintenance persons working for the Town for quite some time now, my question was, why did it take all this time to finally notice the streets needed repair? You need to stay on top of things and get things fixed as they happen. if steps were taken then, we wouldn’t be where we are now. Carbon St was pretty bad, but we also have other areas in dire need of repair. Carbon Street was repaired to a degree and Some of Missouri was repaired, Carbon was taken care of to the corner of Carbon and Missouri and potholes were filled from the corner of West River and Missouri to the alley, the other half of Missouri is still uneven and has a huge hole at the south corner. To be fair, weather conditions are a big part of repair and also money is a big issue. BUT, if time and performance were made a priority, we might not be faced with this outcry about streets and other issues .I was accused of having an agenda, at first I said no I did not. But after some thought about that remark I have to say YES, I do have an agenda. I want to do my very best to work with the Council to get these issues taken care of and try to save money to do them and in doing that, some cuts have to be made. Yes the budget has been balanced over the last few years, but we have to do some other things to make that happen, and we still can’t afford to maintain or make needed repairs, but we have been able to raise wages. I said at the budget meetings that the job performance of the employees does not justify the wages we pay. We need to think about not only the streets, but grading and leveling the alleys, finding dollars for repair the mosquito fogger and get someone certified to operate it, the ditch on main street need repair badly, curb stops need to be replaced, weeds on the streets need to be sprayed and there are sidewalks that need repaired or replaced, and on and on and on… There are also many small items in the budget that suck up dollars and we need to focus on those . Watching the nickels helps to build dollars( a lesson my mother drummed into me). We need to start looking hard at the things we NEED and not the things we want. It will take a lot of hard work, but we as a community can and should demand it.
Not only do we need to CUT costs, so we can put $$ to better use, we need to INCREASE REVENUE. There is only one Town employee (that I know of) than can do that, and yet the opportunities are missed daily.
While that is very true, the employee supervisor is more to blame than the employee. The lack of direction is sorely lacking. The statement was made by the Mayor , when questioned about the work logs that were to filled out daily, “well they did it for a couple of months then stopped as they didn’t have to time to do it” Maybe the answer to that problem, would be a phone that many employers use for their employees, that keeps tract of time and projects worked on. Every time they start a job, they say what they are working on and report when they are finished. This records and time stamps the workload, when it was started and when it was finished, then on to another project and so and so forth. There would not be any wasted time, like sitting in the office and doing nothing or surfing the web for schools they can attend or looking for equipment to make the job easier.
In reference to our “Low Interest” loan, it is not all as glossy as it seems. We had an existing loan that was refinanced with the Towns application for a new loan. I am not saying it was a bad deal, it turned out to be a very good deal for the Town, as we were able to get a lower interest rate and save that amount of money. Rural Development did all of the work on the numbers and presented them to the Council and we agreed to it. The real effort and kudos for the hard work has be given to RD.
Thank you for your comment and your candor.