Sometimes the biggest question about how a City is managed is revealed by the citizens and their concerns. Recently many citizens in Lamar, along with the rest of the area have voiced concerns over the number of CITY employees, or GOVERNMENT employees and who is actually paying the bill. As a member of the WORKING Middle Class, I’m paying the bill. It’s called INCOME TAX and that pays a great huge lot of the payroll for Government Employees. City and State taxes, various community revenues, and interactive use taxes pay many other kinds of payrolls.
In other words, if you’re paying some kind of city tax (license plates, commercial, business taxes, fines, or other sources of revenu) you’re paying the payroll of City Employees.
As the rest of us get laid off or “downsized” out of our jobs, do the city, state and federal governments downsize government, state, or city employees?
Who needs TWO City Code Inspectors for a community the size of Lamar, Colorado? Should those City Code Inspectors be paid more than the median wage (EXCLUDING CITY EMPLOYEE WAGES) of the citizens in the community? What about other city employees? As the citizens of a community have to cut back to meet the costs of living, acknowledge downsizing and other costs of the current economic downturn, shouldn’t the CITY be expected to follow suite?
Perhaps a rejuvination of the community could include some serious cut backs in employees instead of raising taxes, on an already overburdened working middle class?
Instead of the city spending money on NEW decorations, community edification, urban renewal and wouldn’t it make more sense for them to spend money on getting the City Light Plant ON BOARD? Whatever happened to the deadline of LAST January 2008, for the Lamar City Light Plant?
Oh, that light plant, that STILL isn’t working was unwanted by the working class citizens in the community that’s building it. In fact, isn’t that the very light plant that was VOTED DOWN, twice?
The city of Lamar has some serious financial issues to contend with, and yet… We’re continuing to operate with the same ineffectual problems rising time after time?
Is there a visible problem with the decision making skills at the city level? Perhaps the problem is too many voices in the governing body and not enough actual decisions being made? Let’s cut the payroll in half and see if it doesn’t firm up the flab that rests in local government and move upward from there.
