What Are We Doing?

About those payroll expenses (April 26, 2017)

Thank goodness we have Marc Puckett, the Wizard of Flint, serving as our Assistant Town Manager for Finance. Who else could possibly have the wisdom to inform us about how better to run an already well-run local business?

One of Mr. Puckett’s notions is to seize our local water company, and then trim the payroll to save money. Anyone who runs a business knows that payroll costs can be a large — if not dominant — percentage of the monies needed for operation. Fortunately, Mr. Puckett is well-positioned to tell us how eliminating a couple of Liberty private-sector employees (annual compensation: less than $200,000 each) and replacing them with government employees such as himself (annual compensation: $314,000+, plus whatever it costs to correct the issues in his work product and the consequences therefrom), Town Manager Frank Robinson (annual compensation: $340,000+), and other Assistant Town Managers (annual compensation: $300,000+) is the way forward. We’ll be spending ourselves into prosperity!

Apparently, trimming the payroll is a benefit that only accrues to private-sector businesses that the Town intends to seize, though, as the Town itself spends in excess of $10 million annually on payroll and benefits, and you can see from the sorry state of things how little it buys us. Even with all that outlay, the Town still can’t even identify what problems need to be addressed without watching YouTube videos made by concerned citizens such as Kerry Henard.

Just think how great the local control of our water system will be when all those high-price replacement government employees are spending their days watching YouTube along with the rest of the Public Works Department.

— Greg Raven is Co-Chair of Apple Valley Citizens for Government Accountability, and is concerned about quality of life issues.