Week 4

          A good part of this week was spent working on comparing the actual 2010 and 2011 revenues and expenditures of the General Fund.  This involved developing spreadsheets, graphs, and pie charts.  This has taken much longer than it should have as I was unaware that I needed to combine amounts for the various classifications from different departments.  I think it was a valuable lesson as it gave me a much clearer picture of the revenues and expenditures of the City.  The largest departmental expenditures were the Fire/EMS Department and the Police Department.  My work focused only on the General Fund.  The document I was preparing is for the City Council so that they can review the past year’s revenues and expenditures.  There was a 1.6 mils property tax increase that went into effect in 2011 which created an increase in property tax revenues.  This was counter-balanced in part by a drop in new housing permit revenues and a slight reduction in property values.

          Assistant City Manager Lunda Asmani asked that I schedule individual insurance renewal meetings including the Assistant City Managers, City department heads, and supervisors.  My first scheduling contact was Suzanne Loomis, the City Engineer and Director of Public Works.  There is no one busier at City Hall than Suzanne and I worked the rest of the meetings around her availability.  Suzanne has me working on research for her regarding fluoridation of city water as she is questioning the advisability of it.  Fluoride was originally a rat poison and is very corrosive.  In my research I have found that the federal government has reduced the levels of fluoridation they recommend.  I still have more research to do on this and am wondering if fluoride is bio-accumulative.  Suzanne has asked me to check with Dr. White to see if she would be interested in researching this.  Suzanne has been helpful to me regarding my research with Dr. White on the EPA’s NPDES Phase II project.  She spearheads a consortium of municipal public works officials called the Clean 19.  She will be taking me to their quarterly meeting in March.

          Thursday afternoon was spent in the City Prosecutor’s office and in Municipal Court.  First you must remember that this is a small town…there were three 13 year old kids that were ticketed and fined for possession of cigarettes.  One of them had been before the judge the month before.  These fines range up to $200 and the kids were given community service jobs which pay $5 per hour.  The judge displays a myriad of emotions – sternness, humor, and common sense.  Of course there were others who were there for drunk driving, domestic violence, animal control issues, speeding, and running stop signs.  It seems that over half of the people that appeared in the City Prosecutor’s office had appeared there before and the secretary knew them by name.  There were situations in which I found myself feeling sorry for individuals on both sides.  I also found that I am not a good judge of character as one man that I thought seemed like a rational father had previously been convicted of beating his wife and another that I thought looked like a drunk actually worked to help young people with addictions.  Guess its a good thing that I never met BTK or I would have thought him to be my friend!  For those of you who have never heard of him, he was a serial murderer from this general area and BTK stood for Bind Torture & Kill.  I am certainly glad that he is in prison and will never get out.