Open Mike for Idaho Falls City Workers July 2007
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We occasionally republish this open forum for Idaho Falls city workers. This monthly open forum is a vehicle for city workers (or anyone with knowledge of inner city workings) to discuss what they think is going good and going wrong for our Idaho Falls government.
City workers are invited to give kudos to people who may be overlooked by their bosses. I hope these comments appear often. Upcoming city news and announcements are also welcome here.
City workers are also invited to alert everyone of potential problems brewing in our municipality. They can anonymously report misdeeds, fraud, or abuse. Our local mass media read the articles and comments on IdahoFallz.com often, and they look into all allegations. Tips left here will produce follow ups.
This month, there are two issues involving our Mayor Jared Fuhriman, who usually (wisely) is not involved in controversy.
The first issue was his statement to presidential candidate Mitt Romney that “We” support his values, etc. Some folks are rankled about that statement because they disagree with Romney’s platform, and do not think he should have spoken for everyone.
The second issue is our city council giving either the Mayor’s officeholder or Jared Fuhriman a raise. The raise is from the current $66,000 annual salary to $75,000 in January 2008, then again raised up to $78,000 in January 2009. The question is if the raise was for the mayor’s office, which has not seen a raise since 1999, or if it was for Jared Fuhriman because of his large family?
The council could have just said the raise was overdue since the Idaho Falls Mayor’s officeholder has not had a raise in eight years. That would have probably left well enough alone.
Unfortunately, Councilwoman Cornwell had to throw out the rationale that the raise was needed because the mayor has a large family (seven kids). This statement indicates the raise was motivated by this specific mayor’s personal needs. The question raised by many city workers is if other city workers with large families will be receiving large raises above what city workers with smaller families will receive?
Unfortunately, Councilman Groberg had to throw out the rationale that the raise was needed because our mayor’s salary was below average comparatively. The PR ran some numbers indicating Pocatello’s mayor earns $68,000. This seems comparable, although Idaho Falls is widely regarded as having slightly larger population, and is widely expected to surge in population.
Perhaps these pay raises were a little steep, and we will be slightly overpaying our mayor for a few years? Did the council figure they would not give the mayor a raise for another 8 years, so they wanted to buffer it?
The mayor’s pay raise comes at a time that city budgets are rumored to be frozen, city worker pay raises are rumored to be low, and city worker overtime opportunities are rumored to be frozen.
Groberg also had to throw out the rationale that a higher salary is needed to attract qualified candidates in our next mayoral race. Did this statement indicate he does not believe we had any qualified mayor candidates in our last race?
So how do you think our local government is running?
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Comments
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0 
0 As for the mayor’s raise, I’ve heard grumblings that
- Idaho Falls city employees got low raises this year, about 1.5%. However, what were the raises over since 1999, when the mayor’s office got it’s last raise? Do the percentages compare over that 8 year period?
- Pocatello city employees earn more wages than Idaho Falls city employees.
- City employees are hearing rumors their benefits may be reduced this year, at the same time the mayor is getting a hefty raise.
- No new equipment is supposedly being purchased by our city as part of freezing budgets.
- Perhaps the city council should address mayor pay every 12 or 24 months, so raises are smaller and incremental, not so large and seemingly conflicting with what city workers are getting?
- The mayor got his raise supposedly just two days after he froze overtime for all city workers? Keep in mind that families start to depend on that overtime when it is a regular part of their work week.
- One guest remarked, “We won’t know the final numbers for some time yet. We still have our fingers crossed it won’t be as dire as expected. Of course I’m only talking about the non power company and non firefighter employees. They are speeeciaaal and get special treatment and raises. Everyone else though, parks, police, water, sewer, etc, are the ones whose status is up in the air.”
What do you think?
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0 0 The whole pay raise thing would have been easily avoidable if they would just give the mayor the same raise each year the city employees get one. That would only make sense and no one would think twice at a no brainer solution like this. The only real problem IMO as a city employee is the timing of it coming right on the heels of budget cuts, overtime freezes, and rumors of an impending non-raise for the rest of us.
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0 0 As to the “We support Romney” flap. Much ado about nothing. You would expect that a former mormon bishop like Fuhriman is going to vote Romney. Religion is always a huge factor in elections and being mormon is going to be a very positive thing for Romney in SE Idaho and Utah even if a negative everywhere else. Fuhriman should have phrased it differently but its small potatoes.
And I agree that the only problem with the raise is the timing of it given the other things going on with the city as is being reported. The best solution would have been a resolution to from here out give the mayor the same raise that city employees get. The mayor does not vote on the raise, the council does, so its not even a conflict of interest. But then again I’m being silly and using common sense. When has that ever mattered in politics be it national or local?
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0 0 Disturbing Thoughts,
I can see the logic in what you say about Mitt Romney and Mormons. But, an interesting and very public example of where two active Mormons are supporting different candidates are the Huntsmans.
Gov. Huntsman from UT went to Boise with John McCain - R-AZ, to campaign as he backs his bid for the presidency. His father, billionaire Jon Huntsman, Sr., backs Romney.
I don’t think it is safe to assume anything based on religion alone.
Many people admire McCain, dating back to his POW status in Vietnam and his understanding of the Middle East as it is today.
Others, think Romney is great because he salvaged the Olympics from former Salt Lake City Mayor Dee Dee Coradini and her “crew.” The U.S. easily could have lost those Olympic Games, let alone the money involved.
Several of former Mayor Coradini’s pals have spent time behind bars for their activities.
So many think what Mitt Romney did to turn things totally around so not only did the Olympics occur with no terroists threats (they were less than 6 months after 9/11), but he cleaned up the messes, sorted the good players from the bad and referred the people who had broken laws to the appropriate levels of law enforcement or Olympic Committee Sanctioning.
Additionally, Mitt managed to make the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics profitable, and the venues are so popular a couple of the teams have moved their permanent training location to UT. Besides, Int’l competitions now occur annually in Park City that didn’t before because the world got to see the facilities.
I was able to attend one Olympic event in UT and it truly is a wonderful experience to think about those sitting around you and what they’ve sacrificied/endured in their various countries, to be athletes in the Olympics.
Romney also got a basic health care plan passed in MA for all MA residents.
Each man has accomplished a lot in their respective lives. I don’t think all Mormons plan on voting for Romney just because he, too, is LDS.
I’ll probably have to post it later, as I can’t remember for sure, but it was probably Dan Jones/KSL that ran the poll of how many LDS would vote for Romney simply because of his religion.
Meanwhile, rumor has it that McCain has planned much more time and attention to the Intermountain West where many LDS members live.
If ONLY ALL the candidates would give eastern ID the attention these two have or will be doing, that would be awesome.
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0 0 I spoke with Mayor Fuhriman about some of these things going on. I don’t want to do direct quotes, but this is the understanding I walked away with.
The “We” thing, he was addressing the room, the hangar, the people gathered at that specific event. It was a group of obvious Romney supporters, “we” obviously should have referred to that group in attendance only.
I wonder if the PR will retract their jeers (though it was an opinion bit so maybe not).
The raise comments. He cannot control what other folks say. The subjective statements in question were said after the real reason given that there had been no raise since 1999. I got the impression the comments were said in a more conversational manner, not as part of the debate to sway opinions.
City workers issues. No budgets have been frozen. They mayor did not cut anyone’s OT. They are concerned with keeping the levy flat this year, so he sat with the city’s section chiefs and asked them to cut costs if they could. He directed them to not cut their operating budget this year, but if they had slack in it over what they felt they would realistically use, to try to save it over for the next budget.
He gave the advice of do what you can with OT to save money, but OT was not ordered cut, and city safety will not be compromised by OT getting cut.
Some OT will still be available, because cops and electrical workers still sometimes need it to care for city needs.
City employees got fairly hefty raises for several years from 1999-2005. Raises were 3-3.5% pay increase with 2-3.5% insurance increases (total 5-7% annual increases). The last couple years the city has had to restrict the raises to 1.7-ish% pay increase plus similar insurance cost increases.
Add that up, and city workers conservatively got at least 16% raises in the same years from 1999-2008, where the mayor’s office got a 14% raise.
The other thing in this, is that the city budget and pay and all that are influenced by many things, and there’s a lot of budgeting balancing that goes on. It’s not quite fair to pull two or three numbers out and try to make them indicate the entire budget state.
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0 0 So is Fuhriman lying or is my division chief? Probably both are to some extent.
I’ve got several emails in my city email inbox from the division director saying that the budget has been frozen. No more equipment will be purchased this year and no overtime except when absolutely necessary will be granted.
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0 0 As I understand it, the chiefs were asked to see what they could save. No budgets were ordered frozen. The directive was, as I understood it, to look at the excess of what you need to operate this year, and try to save that money for next year.
I think the disconnect is between the Mayor asking them to do what they can to save money (without specific orders), and how the section chiefs decided to implement it.
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0 0 The yearly “raise”, as people refer to it, isn’t a step increase in pay but a cost of living adjustment (COLA) and it’s not keeping up with inflation. Most City employees haven’t seen a step increase in over a decade. All they have to look forward to is the yearly COLA and 3.5% diminishing down to 1.0% doesn’t cut it.
The Mayor’s pay adjustment is definitely earned and needed but it came at a bad time when all division heads have been told to slash budgets. I even heard that some divisions have had to give money back to the general fund to the tune of $200,000 taking away valuable training and equipment.
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0 0 Its also worth mentioning that under city pay scales employees STOP receiving anything but cost of living raises after 20 years. Once you hit the 20 year mark you’ll never see another pay increase outside of cost of living unless you get promoted. As such you’ve got guys who are nearing their 40 year mark making the same as guys with just over 20 years because they are at the same place in the payscale. The easy solution would be to just continue the step pay increases out to infinity. You get your second to last raise at 15 years and your very last one at 20 years. It would be simple to pass a resolution to keep giving one every five years which is certainly better than the never that currently exists.
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0 0 Here is the latest on developments for city workers. None of this finalized but the writing is on the wall.
Utility workers are going to see a nice raise, bonuses, and the same benefits.
No one else is going to receive a raise. In addition health insurance benefits are going to be reduced drastically. Deductibles will be raised over 1000% from the current $100 a person to $1500 a person. And coverage of what is paid after the deductible will be cut as well.
This is extremely dire news to employees as expected retirement pay under our system {PERSI) is contingent on a minimum annual 3% raise. If we don’t get that raise, and we didn’t last year and won’t this year it looks like, it means that we won’t be able to get near what we should at retirement meaning we’ll have to worker longer. The loss of a raise just one year impacts every year after that by reducing what those raises would be by a ten cents or so a year. Over the years this accumulates to a couple of dollars an hour and when your retirement is based on a percentage of your average final pay this severely impacts your retirement checks. And now we have to face two years of lost potential.
The city council and Fuhriman are public enemy #1 to employees now based on comments I hear from those in several divisions. I’ve even seen photocopied pictures of Fuhriman going around with devil horns on them. I’ve also heard loose talk about striking, so far its just a few angry few saying they should nothing more, and I’ve heard the police are seriously taking steps towards trying to unionize. He has even become persona non grata there despite formerly being one of them.
Especially hard to swallow is how the electrical department is getting stuff while everyone else is not, the millions of dollars spent on the new ball park, and the big raise to Fuhriman coupled with Cornwell’s comment about him needing to feed his kids. I guess she thinks the rest of our kids can starve.
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0 0 Sounds like some bad mojo!
From what I understand, utility worker contracts have to be special because those workers have competitive marketplace skills. If we do not treat them excellent, it is too easy to lose them and then we are left with less than ideal workers and/or experience. So we either pay the high market rates for utility workers, or we save a few bucks and suffer electrical problems as a city.
Nobody else is going to receive a raise? I’ve heard otherwise, anyone else have perspective on that rumor?
Health insurance deductibles raised from $100 to $1500? That sounds too drastic, it does not sound credible to happen in one year. Anyone with perspective on that rumor?
I don’t know if the city offers vision insurance, but I’ve always thought that was a waste of money. They restrict you to one pair every year or so, and an eye exam every year or so, and barely pay on what you do. Essentially you’re paying for the middleman.
I hear you on PERSI, I was once a public employee and learned about what a tough system it is. They really make you earn the benefits. Let’s hope the city budget takes into account how PERSI gets affected by pay raises.
If city employees can help identify waste or money pits that may not be in our best interests, perhaps they can help the budget?
Let’s hope our city can get through these problems.
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0 0 SO many people are naive as to think they can rely on any type of retirement pay once they retire. Whether it be from our failing social security system or your own government funded program (PERSI). Look what happened to all those Enron employees who lost their retirement plans, pensions, etc. Didnt anybody learn anything from that? Unless you’ve been living in a cave for the past 20 years, you should know that Social Security is not going to cover your living expenses once you retire. This is why it’s so important that everyone save on their own. Start your own IRA or personal retirement fund and for heavensake, don’t rely on the government or big business to be there for you!
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0 0 I heard the city employees might be getting a 0.6% raise which is near to nothing. The $1500 deductible is seriously being looked at. Its all just in the proposal stage right now according to my spouse (a city worker) but the way it looks those are best case scenarios.
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0 0 I feel badly for the city employees who are having their insurance deductibles changed. When that happened to me several years ago, it was a little hard to swallow. But the fact is, it has been happening in private industry for a long time now. And even though I receive excellent job reviews and evaluations, I haven’t had more than a “cost-of-living” raise for a long time.
Sadly, JimBob is right. We should be more responsible for our own lives so that we aren’t dependent on something that may not be there when we need it. Times change. Many people believe that they are still entitled to benefits that have already been taken away from workers outside the government.
I’ll probably catch flak for this, but I believe that when it comes right down to it, city and other government employees still have better benefits than most people in private business. They have great hours, some get to drive city-owned vehicles, and they get a lot more paid holidays than most others do. I am a veteran, and I don’t get Veteran’s Day off.
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0 0 There are hundreds of city workers who do not get holidays off. Some of them will but not all. Police are always on, as are fire fighters, as are paramedics, as are dispatchers, as are some electrical workers. And if it snows heavily the street department has to come out, even if its Christmas, to plow. Of course they get paid extra for working those holidays and as I said not every one of them will be working on a given holiday but they don’t get them off like most people do. These same people also suffer the rigors of working shift work and weekends, thus giving up a lot of time with family, and get no extra compensation for it. Most employers offer things like shift differential for the harshness of having to work odd hours or weekends, not so with the city not that the employees haven’t tried to get. Milam and her administration said they didn’t deserve it. Fuhriman, like he does on everything, has promised to look into it but like Fuhriman usually does he talks big and delivers little.
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0 0 The lower wages the city pays compared to similar jobs in other cities used to be offset by the very excellent benefit package they had. Now it sounds like that is going away so our city employees will be getting second rate pay and second rate benefits. Which will lead to second rate service.
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0 0 City leaders have recently issued a decree to all city departments that they must cut gas consumption by 10%. Commendable given current gas prices.
But one must wonder then why are the city leaders having a planning session today in Island Park, some 90 miles away. Even if they carpooled they had to take at least three cars. This is hardly contributing to the gas savings they demand, especially since there are plenty of places here in Idaho Falls they could have had the meeting.
I guess its the do as I say, not as I do policy at work.
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0 0 Sounds like they need to look into video conferencing. That would save a lot on gas and enable everyone to attend.
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0 0 If they video conferenced, they would not get the expensive food and a day away from the office at Tax Payer Expense. Isn’t funny they ask everyone else to cut budgets, but when it comes to the leadership the forget to set the example.
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0 0 Oh, city leaders!!!! If comment #18 is true, how do you justify this waste of precious resources, given the directive you are expecting your staff to follow???
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0 0 I called the Mayor’s Office and spoke to Cathy. She said the Mayor, City Council and Division Directors went up and were back by 3 p.m..
It really seems amazing that they chose to do this. I am going to call the PR and give Marty Trillhase ammo for his Jeers Section. These city leaders are amazing!!!!
What’s the next thing they will ask us to make sacrifices for that they are not willing to do for themselves?
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0 0 It’s not uncommon. ALL businesses do it, so it’s not that big a deal. Besides, its only an hour away. We have people in our business that drive from SLC , Boise, Helena & Rock Springs just for “meetings” all the time. So please don’t make waves for these folks and their cushy jobs. I’m sure many of you would like to work for the government too and you wouldn’t want someone nagging you about your spending habits would you? It’s part of life. Move on to a more important topic……like World Peace!
This topic is an “open mike” FOR the city workers not a criticize the city worker & their driving habits topic. 
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0 0 Pure speculation but I wonder if the fact that one of the council members owns a cabin in Island Park means this member will now be able to somehow milk a tax write off out of this. All on the taxpayer dime no less.
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0 0 That is pure speculation and probably not very kind since we don’t know. I agree, it isn’t a huge issue. Most businesses have employee and/or management meetings elsewhere from time to time. The City isn’t any different. I actually think it was a good idea, maybe they needed to get away. Maybe Paul Wilde could consider something like this for his deputies to help improve morale.
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0 0 I don’t think it’s such a bad idea either. Our company does the same thing, and being one of those employees that gets to participate in the occassional travel for business purpose (meetings) I think it’s a nice break away from the office and see how it can often boost employee morale. Somebody mentioned that they meet at an employee’s cabin. I think thats even better as their not spending big money at an expensive hotel to house their guests/employees.
And yes, I believe there would be a partial tax right off since business is conducted at said cabin.
Good topic of discussion though. I think it’s important that we, as taxpayers, always question and discuss all aspects of how our city spends it’s money. (or our taxpaying dollars)
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0 0 Sorry but when your crying budget crunch and demanding reductions in gas useage by your employees, then the bosses have no business taking numerous vehicles way out of town on a business trip that could have been done in Idaho Falls. If your company is rolling in the money then its fine but the city leaders are pleading poverty to their employees and threatening for the 2nd year in a row to slash benefits. It looks bad, its smells bad, and it is bad of them to waste money on themselves like this.
I call on each and every one of them to reimburse the city for the gas they wasted driving to Island Park and for the meal the city probably got billed for them them while there (normal city employees do not get meals provided to them). Mayor Fuhriman says he is big on integrity and now is the time for him to show if thats true or not.
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0 0 You definitely make some good points Guest. But the fact is this is standard practice for management in all big business, whether its a corporation or government related. It’s part of the perks they receive as management and are part of and/or included in the budget. Now if this type of thing happened on a weekly basis than that would be something to cry foul about, but I dont see anything wrong with the occasional business trip.
(just my opinion)
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0 0 Well, I’m still not happy that some of our city bosses participated in this. If they made the trip a group effort for everyone I’d be okay, as it isn’t normal and could be good for morale for the average employee to have a getaway…
But leadership comes from the top down. Don’t tell me to do without something if as my boss, you’re not willing to make the same sacrifices as you are asking me to make.
That’s also just my opinion…so if someone can make a good argument the other way, I might be persuaded to change my mind.
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0 0 I agree with both CR and Nem on this one oddly enough, since they are disagreeing. Nem, I can say that where I work morale was horribly low and we were in a horrible budget crunch. We got a new boss however, who had the ability to see that his employees were going to be more productive if they were happier. Well he started out doing little things like taking us all to lunch, joking with us, working directly with us, and little by little, employee morale began improving and as it improved, so did finances. Now we take an afternoon every couple months and do something just for staff. We can afford it now and the staff is far happier. And best of all, they have all gotten raises.
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0 0 Anyone see the article in the paper yesterday about the Island Park incident? It cost nearly $20,000 apparently. I’m very concerned about the willingness of our leaders to flush such amounts down the toilet. But then again I shouldn’t expect anything else given this is the same mayor / council who paid nearly $50,000 for a study on whether or not there would be a parking problem if they removed parking on Memorial Drive. It should be obvious to anyone that since there is a parking problem with those spots available its only going to get worse if you remove them.
But hey, I’m sure Mayor Fuhriman is stressed having seven kids so maybe he needed a retreat. After all thats the reason Ida Hardcastle said he deserved the huge raise he got not long ago.
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0 0 $8000.00$
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0 0 $8000 was what they paid for the consultant to come. There were other costs in addition. The PR totaled $15,000 in specific bills. Then you have to consider what it cost the taxpayers in gas and vehicle depreciation to haul nearly 20 people 80 miles and back. Plus many of these were department heads meaning they were earning a salary during the time they were driving to Island Park so you must consider those figures since that is wasted salary. A department head makes around $80-$90 an hour when you figure in the benefit part of their compensation package (the city uses this benefit amount to justify low wages so its only fair if its used against them). They would have gotten paid regardless but the time spent driving could have been time but to productive use if the meeting had been in Idaho Falls. Your going to be pushing $20,000 once you figure on all the real costs.
You see, its this kind of money flushing that frustrates employees and their families so. Last year the city balked at paying $90,000 this year to cover the increase the TOTAL cost in the increase of health insurance and instead slashed benefits. But they’ll flush $20,000 down the toilet here, $50,000 on a pointless study there, another $30,000 on another pointless study. And they wonder why there is such an increasing sense of bitterness and resentment from the employees.
This wasn’t a fluke. You could literally total hundreds of thousands of dollars every year that the city flushes away on useless expenses. But the public ho hums it. I recall seeing a poster in one of these comments talking about the overpriced city garages and others ho-humming that “overpriced oil changes” was all they were complaining about. If the city charges around $50 per oil change to for their fleet when they could do it for $25 in the regular world then thats $25.00 wasted per oil change. The city has hundreds of cars in its fleet many of which have to have their oil changed three or four or five times a year. Thats tens of thousands of dollars in flushed money right there and we’re just talking oil changes. Imagine when you consider more expensive vehicle maintenance.
This example is just a tip of the iceberg type of problem. Everyone, especially the employees, are aware of this waste and bitter when the city turns around and cries poverty to them as they slash more benefits. But it seems no one with power is wiling to do anything about it.
Sorry this is rambling but this is a major sore point for me and I tend to get wound up about it.
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0 0 Anon #33, I understand your griping. Again, if the city leaders want buyin and true assistance from the lower echelons with cost cutting measures, they need to be willing to walk the walk themselves.
Easy to talk the talk. Show the rest of us you’re serious about saving money by having the wasted buck stop with you, city leaders.
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0 0 I agree with your post (#33). What can we as John Q Public do? We can say — rant — rave all we want on one of these blogs, but the bottom line is that it isn’t really going to have much of an impact. We can try to institute changes when it comes time to vote, but that is a ways down the road. Letters to the Editor in the Post Register might have some impact, but then people lose their anonymity (sp?). Maybe attend City Council meetings and voice our concerns? Again the anonymity factor comes into play. Remaining anonymous is necessary to some of us because of many factors. But give us some ideas as to what we can do behind the scenes while others are leading the “charge”.
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0 0 Run for office yourself….or support someone who you know that won’t act like this in office. You can give money, time, or even serve on a local board and provide a voice of reason and accountablility when folks want to start climbing down the slippery slope and wasting money.
Perhaps you could suggest to the Mayor to create a citizens advisory panel on saving money and common sense spending.
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0 0 Maybe some brave and daring poster should write a letter to the editor and provide links to both this thread and the Bonneville County Sheriff thread. Let Wilde and Fuhriman read them and some of the outrage posted and allow other people to take note that the threads exist in case they too want to read them and respond too. Sorry but that’s all I can come up with.
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0 0 total as per post register 8000.00 -/+=7000.00 for consultant it was 200.00 food and rest was fuel and wear and tear .salaries are including weekends
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0 0 PR had a letter to editor describing their 12 year old son selling pops on the greenbelt before the fireworks, and a “local dignitary/city executive board member” harassing the kid and parents. This person tried to stop them from selling pops, kick them off the greenbelt, and swore repeatedly to the kid and parents, dropping several f-bombs.
Who was this “local dignitary/city executive board member”? I have not heard of a city executive board, do they mean the city council or the chamber of commerce or ? The writer did not identify them, but I want to know who this clown is, they ought to explain why they did that and probably apologize.
Let’s work together on this and find out who this person was.
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0 0 there is a parade board. should be on city of IF website HA
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I wasn’t going to bring up Jared Fuhriman’s “We” statement to Mitt Romney, but it earned a Jeers from the Post Register and some folks have commented in our chatbox on it.
I think the jeers was lame, and I think the single word “We” may have been taken out of context. Keep in mind that he was in an airport hangar with Romney supporters.
Could that “We agree with your values” statement have referred to those in that hangar, and not meant to imply everyone in Idaho Falls?