At the meeting where Mr. Tebay was in attendance at the Vienna Community Building I believe it was, he sat way in the back on the right hand side. He appeared to be the meat part of a hoagie sandwich with Rapp's piled up on each side of him. And the one who is alleged to be the real Mayor was just yapping away at him during most of the meeting.
Now considering how hard the Rapp's try to run Wood County, it would be of little surprise on what side of the Fee (Tax), they were on? After all, Mr. Rapp has never seen a penny he would not grab from any source be it alive or dead. I believe at the time, it was expected each of the VFD's would get at least a $100K/ year from the new Fee (Tax)? They have now given back so much that it is apparently more like $80K/ year? So Vienna VFD did lose $25K/ Year in the deal, maybe? Don't bet on it, the City will as wanted pony up any amount to keep everyone happy on 28th St. Just a bit of creative book work is all that will be needed. We are now on the seventh (7th) Internal Budget Revision for the year. It must be some kind of a record for the "need" to move money around so much, especially at the very end of a Fiscal Year? But under the new concept, do as needed and don't pile up for a bunch at one time.
At the Council Meeting on the 22d, Mr. Rapp was advising that Ms. Roberts had explained the advantages of more frequent revisions and he was all in for the newer system. But looking back and thinking on what the City is prone to do let us present two scenarios on why this is being done and a strong probability of both?
1. As noted to keep the budget in adjustment sooner and correcting the Department accounts line by line sooner. Fine except there is no real guarantee that it will not be necessary to go back in three months to adjust again?
2. By doing more frequent revisions, it is easier to hide the manipulations of the accounts into slush fund accounts expecting much harder to catch what is going on? Common Governmental process to generate large amounts of paperwork to cover over questionable or outright wrong use of Tax Dollars.
In a State like West Virginia where the people who do the Audits of the Counties/ Cities and do not do very good reviews to begin with, a good Auditor will quickly catch the intents. But when they only review what is said to be an item that someone submits to them, they will be more apt to miss transfers or just overlook them since it seems everybody is everybody else's bubba anyway. I am going to err on the side of shenanigans where Vienna is concerned.
And I finally figured out where I had heard of Mr. Jordon before when it dropped he was the VFD Chief for Williamstown. What is this the third honcho in 6 months for the Fire Board? Something very wrong with the turnover of bosses? But the County Fire Board keeps getting closer to our one and only Mr. Scholl. I already suspect he is the defacto head of the Fire Board now? We should just follow the bouncing ball.
And the Teachers did NOT get their $808./ year raise as Mr. Kelly and Mr. Justice wanted them to have. Wait, it was $1500/ year for four years that Mr. Kelly promised to them. Now I wish to note that it is NOT the Teacher's who are the bad guys here. It is the Union that has at a National/ Local level everywhere for years destroyed the ability of many Teachers to teach. They have been twisted from pillar to post as the Union has exerted its influence for all the wrong reasons instead of doing what a good Union should do. Protect/ Represent their paying members in issues with Management pertaining more to Teaching than running the entire System. And as usual be it here, L.A., D.C. or worst of all I think Chi-town, the kids are the losers. The big Cities are cesspools of corruption and sweet heart deals between the BOE and the Unions as has been shown many times. Yet, the Mayor's in the Cities pretty much just roll over to protect their voter base. And it sure as Hell is NOT the kids. Never the Kids..........
So with all those tawdry examples Nationwide and than down to our little corner of the World, West Virginia most especially can we just year after year offer up $800- !,000. raises? But we seem to be able to do that until this year. AGAIN and yet AGAIN I fully understand the need for a Union many times to protect the employees. I have belonged to Unions over the years from the WWA (Wood Workers of America), when I worked in a Plywood Mill up to the AFGE (American Federation of Government Employees) at the Social Security Administration.
So I am not against the Union concept; just the Union Corruption. Had some truck driver's that worked for me in the early 1990's. They were part of the Teamster's in Seattle. Now of the three I have noted, the Teamster's were the one's that had the stones to tell a business how it was going to do many, many of it practices where the Union was concerned. The mere talk by a Union Steward of a strike sent the Company Executives cringing into a corner. The old saying I believe holds true here "been there, done that".
So back to our Teacher's here. Identify those who are doing superlative work and that will be easily noted by test grades/ graduation rates for their students. Allow them the infamous Merit Raise which I know, is like feeding Hemlock to a Unionist Bigwig in a glass of Kool-Aid. That would solve rewarding our best while the Legislature grows the you know whats to streamline the necessary processes for removing the non-productive people and separating the various BOEs from the Unions they are supposed to deal with? The winners will be the KIDS. Now that is a novel thought?
So we should allow Mr. Justice to point the finger at everyone except himself for not getting the budget he wanted. As a small point of order, there is nothing that says he is entitled to get the budget he wants. The Executive and Legislative Branches are supposed to get the budget that best represents the people of the State. Still not there, but did slow down the rush by the State for more and more and more.
Hopefully, Mr. Ferns will be able to move his Legislative Audit Group forward to become more of an oversight/ developer for the Legislature but at the same time beware they don't become just like the State Agencies they are to oversee in their capacity? I would recommend they begin immediately with the State Auditor's Office and weed out those who just rubber stamp whatever comes to them from any City/ County/ etc. Change Laws as needed to put some teeth in them and than ENFORCE the Laws. That may well be an easy low hanging fruit in reducing costs for the folks? How is that a benefit says you? If the Agency gets at the least scared that its need for so many is not doing the job, the Auditors who just go through the motions may well change their attitudes of "go along, get along" that permeates Government at just about any level. This could result in "findings" on more questionable if not outright misuse of funds in the Counties/ Cities that can benefit those people paying too much? 'nuff said'.