Wednesday,September 10, 2003

New city position unwise in current financial climate

I recently wrote a letter to the editor suggesting that, given the current economy, this is not a good time to create a new $106,000 position of assistant city manager and that if the new city manager is not able to do his job, perhaps he is not the right man for the job.

I was surprised to receive a letter from the mayor, Steve Brown, in response. In his letter, there was a good bit of smoke about keeping up with new federal laws and problems resulting from our "aging city."

I read my newspapers fairly closely and I do not recall any changing federal laws that would require the attention of our city manager. Furthermore, our city may be aging, but it is by far the youngest in our area.

It is not reasonable to assume that our city manager has greater responsibilities than the city managers of other nearby, older areas, especially when those managers often have to deal with services not provided by Peachtree City, such as city fire departments and garbage pickup.

It looks more and more to me as if the current city manager is not prepared to do his job. I hope that the people who hire him, the city council, will not go ahead with their plan and hire another person as assistant city manager. That would have the added bonus of not spending $106,000.

If you agree, City Hall needs to know. Call 770-487-7657.

Bonnie R. Mullikin

Peachtree City, Ga.