INC NEWS - Where are tax dollars are going
TheOcean1 at aol.com
TheOcean1 at aol.com
Thu Sep 28 12:35:20 EDT 2006
While I agree that we MUST (not should!) hold our elected officials
accountable, sometimes the situation isn't as clear as this one.
If the City were to hand another loan program to Anita Bennett, then I'd be
the first to grab a pitch fork. And this Durham Regional Financial situation
seems pretty easy to have seen coming, but that's not always the case.
Being diligent with our tax dollars isn't an easy job, but they knew that
when they ran for office. A simple Google search would have prevented egg on
their faces in this case.
But in a few cases, waste might occur through zero fault of our government.
Cases like this might be few and far between, but I know of a 60 year old
nonprofit that went from awesome to awful, in the course of one year.
That nonprofit receives very little from the City in the way of funding, but
should we fault our elected officials for funding something with a long
track record of success? They can't always know the current shape of every
organization with whom they deal, as much as we wish they could.
So to be fair, Self Help clearly would have been a better choice of partners
here, but if they had quietly fallen apart just before the announcement went
out..... well, you can't blame the City for having faith in their good track
record.
I appreciate these exceptions are few and far between, but to be fair, we
must recognize they do exist.
Bill Anderson
In a message dated 9/28/2006 9:52:55 A.M. Eastern Standard Time,
jdag at clappresearch.com writes:
I agree we should hold our elected officials accountable.
But we need to remember that the elected officials (most of them) have full
time employment in other jobs. They need to be able to depend on the
executive staff and other “full time” city staff to keep them fully informed on key
issues. They also need to be able to depend on city staff to properly manage
the day-to-day workings of government so the elected officials don’t have to
micromanage (which, I think, some of them do). If the elected officials find
out that city staff is not keeping them appropriately up to speed, or that
the staff is not properly handling the day-to-day workings, then they should
take appropriate action.
Keep in mind that the City Council only hires and fires a few top level
staff. So, they have to depend on those people to take appropriate action when
needed.
If we find out that elected officials are not appropriately holding staff
accountable, when they know things aren’t going well, then we have the
opportunity to change that at election time. In my opinion, that’s the beautiful
thing about our form of government.
____________________________________
From: inc-list-bounces at rtpnet.org [mailto:inc-list-bounces at rtpnet.org] On
Behalf Of Regina deLacy
Sent: Thursday, September 28, 2006 7:51 AM
To: Caleb Southern
Cc: inc-list at durhaminc.org
Subject: Re: INC NEWS - Where are tax dollars are going
What would you have the elected officials do in order to keep this from
happening again? How would a new set of elected officials change the procedures
of unelected employees?
There needs to be a plan for better oversight, not just a chorus of, "Work
harder! Do Better!"
- Regina
Caleb Southern wrote:
What do you propose we do?
Hold our elected officials accountable. Don't let them pass the buck (to
city staff). Tell them what our real priorities are. And remember this at
election time.
You can email city council at:
_council at durhamnc.gov_ (mailto:council at durhamnc.gov)
Caleb
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