So tonights city council meeting nearly gave me a heart attack! I initially went to discuss the fact that the city still plans on spending money to prevent Concealed Carry (CC) holders from carrying in City Hall. Mind you that is the only city building they are considering. They want to spend $55,000 dollars on upgrades (to start) including bullet proof glass and sirens. I of course pointed out that all the legal CC persons have had a background check and that this is a total waste of money. I pointed out that the bullet proof glass does nothing if I were to shoot through the sheet rock on the wall. I even asked acting Captain Belcher if that were the case, he agreed. Then I pointed out that this city has 2 SROs (School Resource Officers) and that the $55,000 would be better spent protecting our children via another SRO! While I was waiting to make my points the slide show of expenditures was going by for the CIP (City Improvement Plan) where based on Councils direction the city staff formulates a plan for the future. The staff had come up with a number of $500,000 to design the new police station and $4,500,000 to build it! I told them as a tax payer I am tired of seeing these numbers! We are so in debt now that we need to watch every dollar and to spend $500,000 on design? After I and S.l. Carlisle spoke Councilman Steve Shute spoke up and said that the public needed to be made aware of these numbers before a vote was taken. Tory Roberts agreed with him, Heath Freeman was a bit more reluctant but in the end agreed. The Mayor and Kristina Harrison were both of the belief that you as citizens have had your time in council meetings to disagree with these expenditures. In total over $20,000,000 of STUFF that you and I will have to pay for. I applaud the Steve and Tory for standing strong to force council to vote another day. Here is where you the Citizens of Gardner come in. We need everyone we can muster to the 6pm meeting on November 17th (this is before the normal council meeting) to show up and let council know how you feel about these expenditures. The council could vote on this at the meeting starting at 7pm that night. Walter Hermreck could you please post a link to the list of expenditures that the city has provided? If you are tired of paying more taxes than any other city in Johnson County and not getting your moneys worth you need to be at this meeting. We need everyone to look over that document and find anything that you think is excessive and bring it up! No longer can we afford (literally) to be ignorant of what is going on at City Hall! Do what you need to do now to ensure that you are off work, have a sitter lined up, have some one to walk the dog, what ever keeps you from a meeting resolved before the 17th. Thanks and I look forward to seeing all of you.
Posted on: Tue, 21 Oct 2014 02:41:38 +0000