By: Diane Benjamin
This Council meeting was shorter than Normal’s last night. The video is only 38 minutes long, but the meeting didn’t start at zero.
The Council gushed over departing City Clerk Cherry Lawson. Keep in mind she has only been here since June of 2015. Taxpayers paid over $2600 to move her here from Arizona, now she’s moving back. https://blnnews.com/2015/06/02/moving-expenses-toters-and-you-foia/
Meanwhile, Friday I received 2 FOIA extensions and another one on Monday. Also, Kimberly Bray demanded the minutes from the last meeting be corrected pertaining to the new water and sewer insurance the City is now pushing. They didn’t accurately reflect what happened. All of the above was Cherry’s job.
The City did introduce the new temporary clerk. She is currently a contract employee, she is going to try it out and see if the job fits. City Manager Gleason claims she has new ideas for efficiency and cost savings in the clerk’s office. How about put EVERYTHING on-line? How about cutting legal out of the process? Documents belong to the citizens, denials and unwarranted redacting make the Clerk look like she are hiding something. Her name is Leslie Yocum.
The Finance Director presented revenue to date, as usual the charts were not included in the packet. Being transparent means pretending to be transparent. Nice.
Other than passing the tax levy, nothing much happened. Gleason stated the City has 650 full-time employees.
Watch the whole brief meeting here:
Wait….. I saw some charts, and graphs, and columns of spreadsheets with thunderous applause of the successes from our City leaders…. Wait…. I also saw an invisible dress worn by a king.
I will REALLY be impressed when the council as a WHOLE can get along WITH the sitting mayor AND make GOOD business decisions that bring prosperity, business and tax revenue to our fair city and RESTORE it to WHAT it was before all these denizens got into power and made the business climate so unfriendly that it looks like Ultima Thule!
wait….. isn’t she the contract administrator that Hales appointed to oversee Venuworks, Genesis something?!
She is the contract administrator, not sure what she does
I am not an advocate of putting everything online because then many times that becomes the only option of dealing with such offices. Plus all you’ll get is robotic voices and answers only to the pre-conceived questions that don’t include yours, possibly causing phone rage. Know how many phones I’ve flung across the room in the last few years? Huh? None. But perhaps some folks have.