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More corruption from Blytheville city government
To the editor:
I would like to start off by saying that it sickens me every time I read about our city government. What is it going to take to get it through to the people of Blytheville that the city government in our town is doing the same thing as the last?
We the people need to vote the current clowns out of office. All of them must go! We cannot keep going down the road we are going. You can not spend your way to prosperity! Why is it our city council cannot say the word NO?
If we need work done, were supposed to take bids, but our council is well known for suspending bids and hiring whoever to do the work. See where the parks and rec department had 19 workers at the swimming pool last year. That seems like an awful lot for something that is only open five days a week for five hours a day. I don't know if anyone has noticed, but the the pond's fountain is no longer working. I would also like to know where the so-called Nile Tilapia came from since the AGFC told me last year that they no longer stock Nile Tilapia.
I would also like to remind Mr. Tommy Abbott that the tax money for parks and rec is to be spent on that alone, not infrastructure and roads like he referred to in the Courier's article on Dec. 6, 2013. This to me suggests once again robbing Peter to pay Paul. We cannot pay our jail fees, but we want to spend money on renaming streets! We see that $900,000 in surplus is expected in next year's budget, but of course there is an issue of jail fees. The Courier had an article on Friday, Nov. 22, 2013, about Harrison wanting to be reimbursed; at the bottom of the article was a very interesting piece of information: "-- Heard a reminder from Abbott about funds committed to repay the Infrastructure fund $621,166.37; pay the Greater Blytheville Area Chamber of Commerce, $13,5000 plus $30,000 arrears; Main Street Blytheville, the remaining $24,000; the Mississippi County Union Mission, $4,000; and the Great River Charitable Clinic, $2,500."
"We just haven't had the money in the General Fund up to this point," Abbott said. "Hopefully, in the process of us cleaning up all this stuff here at the end of the year, we'll be able to honor those commitments and take care of those things for those individuals."
There it is, plain as day -- robbing Peter to pay Paul. It does not take a rocket scientist to figure out that if you have to pay back $621,166.37 to the infrastructure fund you borrowed that from somewhere! Once again, we cannot pay our jail fees, but we want to give away $74,000.
I would also like to know where the proceeds of the Lights of the Delta go to.
Let us not forget either that once again we have another scandal going on which has to deal with the mayor's ex-assistant.
We pay sales tax for parks and rec, but our city government decides that that money would be better spent paying salaries.
We have a person being paid to head up parks and rec, another person for Thunder Bayou, another for the Sportsplex, another for the Gateway Museum. Hopefully you can see were I'm going with this. Almost everyone who works for the city makes $40,000 or more!
According to City-Data.com the estimated median household income in 2011: $29,636. Keep in mind that this number is for a household. Also on City-Data.com, you can find out that our violent crime rate in 2011 is 741 with the national average being 213.6. Also you can see that property crimes is 1157.6 with the national average being 273.7. Every year since 1999, Blytheville is well over the national average for crime. The school system is so bad that a member of our city council doesn't even want their kids in our school!
To sum it up, the only way to describe the city government in Blytheville is corruption! I am truly ashamed to call myself a resident of Blytheville! There are a lot of good people here in Blytheville. It's a shame none of them are running our government! I am pleading with the people of Blytheville to vote these people out. Ask yourself, has your life gotten better or worse since they have taken office? We are well on our way to end up like Turrell, Ark. I hope people in the city can get used to burning your trash because it will not be long before that is what were forced to do. We are leasing trash trucks instead of buying them. We are using gas cards for fuel! Residents we need to wake up!