Saturday, May 30, 2009

Council decision costs city $14,000

Our Ferndale city council strikes again. This time it cost the city over $14,000. What caused this? According to the minutes of the May 18th council meeting Director Cecile had made a presentation on April 29th to the Public Works and Utility Committee recommending the approval and forwarding of a contract to Fire Mountain Farms, Inc. in the amount of $59,724.75. This contract was an ongoing one and just needed to be approved this year with the Consumer Price Index rate of inflation increase. The committee rejected this and the contract had to go out to bid.

When the bids came back guess what, Fire Mountain was the sole responder but the amount of the contract went up to $73,945.00.

Recently our council has a trust issue. They seem to be questioning our city staff's recommendations every chance that they can get. I don't understand this. We have a great city staff and they have a lot of experience. So why the questioning and the confrontations both at committee meetings and at council meetings?

In these tough economic times we can't afford to have a council that makes these types of decisions. How are they going to pay for this mistake? Here is my suggestion; cut council's pay to just $1.00 per month! There are a lot of people who give more of their time for free to this city and they do productive work. Recently the council seems to be getting paid only to do blunder after blunder. They are even complaining about attending workshops where they could get additional information to help them make wise decisions.

I would love an explanation from any of the council members on this and I will post any and all of their responses. So, how much more will this council cost the city? Stay tuned.

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