No Guarantees
City Manager Harry Walker and City Council could not guarantee that officers will not be laid off. Instead, Walker and council sat silent when questioned by a resident over the potential layoffs. See Wednesday's edition of the Daily Local News for more details.
6 Comments:
Yeah I was there, apparently they are not sure what they are going to do yet. And Mr. Schenk made a comment that a tax hike is not completely out of the question. Time will tell. And again I was sorry to see a light turnout at the meeting. Hardly no one asked any questions, I thought for sure someone would bring up the hiring of additional Administration workers.
These people make no sense. They seem to keep hiring people at higher salaries and no money to pay them and now this issue with wanting to lay people off. Maybe the best solution would be to keep the working folks and get ride of some of these people they recently hired at larger salaries than the folks that left those positions. I was in City Hall the other day and these people have job postings up to hire people. In addition, they are moving forward with a summer program and rumor has it they have hired about 20 people to run it besides the new Recreation Director. It costs mega bucks to open and run these city pools. It seems it would make more sense to do away with this summer program and let the parents of these children keep them busy for one summer or enroll them somewhere else if they want their children involved in a summer program. When I was in City Hall I also happened to see several young people and asked the receptionist who they were. The answer was they are school/college students that work here part-time. It would seem to me before you lay off police and city hall workers that you would get ride of the part-time people also.
As a resident of this city I get so flustrated with this administration and council. If they are trying to balance a budget they seem to be doing it wrong. It makes no sense to lay off police and city workers because you have no money but you can have a summer program and hire 20 or more people to do it. Who is paying all these salaries? I guess if I asked them to answer they would say it is Rip Hamilton or some other nice guy giving them the money. To cut your budget, stop spending, if the city is supplying gas cards for their administrative staff maybe this is a perfect time to make them pay for it themselves - - or better yet institute "No Travel Allowed." Better yet, park the city vehicles used by administrators and make them drive their own vehicles. This would also save on vehicle repairs. Turn out some lights and leave the air conditioner off and save on your energy bills, get ride of the part-time folks, ask the big guys to give back the increases and higher salaries until the ship is running on a smoothe course. If you have meetings and you feed your guests - - its time to stop. A budget crisis requires everybody to tighten up and that includes the Council Members, Administration Staff, and all workers. There are many ways to save money but you have to want to do it!
I don't believe laying off essential employees that protect and serve the residents of this city is the way to go.
Since council has 4 choices on how to balance the budget I think they should utilitze all 4 methods. 1. lay off some administration workers but no more than 1 police officer. 2. raise taxes slightly, not a lot. 3. borrow a small amount from the trust fund, not a huge amount. and 4. ADVERTISE those surplus properties so people can tell where they are at and buy them. If they only do one of these things it will be in a sizeable amount and will have a bad effect. (except for #4). Any comments?
Poster 8:16
I think the worst thing that the City council could do is raise taxes. That is the reason why no one wants to come to Coatesville. We need to lower the wage tax (I don't like it, but I can live with the property tax). The wage tax of 2.5% is a huge turnoff to people. Why move to a City with blight and high crime and high tax when you could easily live in a surrounding area without these problems.
Coatesville has the burden of convincing people to move here. They are not doing that with a high wage tax.
Also, I would think the surplus is there for times like these. I don't care who caused the current problems, but raising taxes and dicouraging investment is clearly not helping.
One would think no one in the Council or administration has any idea about economics. Take the financial hit now and draw down on the surplus. When investment comes and revenues rise we will make that money back three fold.
High crime and high taxes are not going to attract anyone and the situation is only going to get worse.
They have a Director of Recreation, now they need a Manager of Recreation?? Is the admin job a replacement or addition? And who is Bob Berry (sp?)? He gave the Capital Project update on May 14th. Does he work for the City? Guess we need all these folks, might as well take cops off the street!!
What happened to all the promises when this band of gypies came into town? The newbees slammed and banged the old administration for the budget at the end of the year. They (newbees) were gonna do SO VERY MUCH to improve this City. Instead, they have almost totally destroyed it because of their incompetence. Stop with the "look at what the past administration left" excuse. You vowed to do all this great stuff to proof how great thou art. Well, how great thou AREN'T and the Bloc, Walker and the rest of the gypsy band needs to hop in their wagons and leave town.
As far as people showing up for the Council meetings - why, so you can just get gaveled and insulted by the croonies in the crowd. The good people of Coatesville are trying to keep whatever dignity is left for the City. Just keep hoping the end is in sight.
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