Another productive council meeting last night. Per levy - the property taxes are raised again another 1%. The mayor mentions a meeting he attended last week for councilman Jeff Cooks group regarding some neighborhood watch business in his local neighborhood - but he did not mention the meeting he attended at Gregorian Group (Gregory Johnson) regarding the request for assistance to organize and officially train a city wide program on Neighborhood Watch. Im not sure what the criteria is on getting on the Mayors Report. From that neighborhood watch report I heard the city is trying to build a volunteer group for the police department but you never hear of it anywhere else. God Bless Courtney Cook for being able to get up and ask specific questions about tax increases. Did we raise them the same amount last year? Yes. Did this cover it? Tim Alstrom mentioned we also pulled money from reserve last budget year. Emotional appeal to the council to listen to the constituents about the need for help - we verified a story of a resident who finally was able to get her son off the street and heading for treatment (Youve followed that story here) and Joan Brewster of the Public Health Department appealed to the city for support of the methadone clinic up and coming, the needle exchange program and so forth. I love the fact the Health Department is addressing this - what I dont understand is why we have the plan, the funding, the location and so forth - all in place before we decide to bring it to the public for public comment. Why isnt this coming forth prior to the final plans in place. One question I have - is in a county this geographically large - why are we putting a methadone clinic it the western end of the county? Why not more centralized? I know they are going to speak to population density...but this program was sparked by 56 users of the system that are getting public transported assistance to the tune of 650,000 a year... Which leads me to this question....why isnt the PUBLIC HEALTH DEPARTMENT talking to THE GRAYS HARBOR TRANSIT SYSTEM?? Before we start raising taxes willy nilly - where is THAT discussion? Honestly - dont talk to me about a rehab program for opiate addicts only - talk to me about a rehab program serving ALL drug addiction in this county and then were talking. Talk to me about a system that speeds up to access to treatment instead of this snails pace, segmented issues. Joan is a saint for this county with statistics that speak strongly about this county. She is so right to be leading this county into a multifaceted solution. I would also like to see this addressing multi-faceted population.
Posted on: Thu, 24 Oct 2013 16:17:47 +0000
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