After months of city officials working on a new budget, and then having to cut and carve away at that budget to make it financially feasible, Council Member Bruce Lockett wants to add two city positions to help him answer his phone calls. That is coming at a time when other city employees, up and down the ranks, are being asked to do more with less.
We’re with Mayor Shirley Washington on this, and she’s against Lockett’s proposal.
“We can’t continue to add new positions,” Washington said. “Actually, we need to be looking at reducing some unneeded positions, looking at effectiveness and efficiencies of jobs as needed.”
We do get that holding a full-time job while being a council member is difficult. But council members get paid, and if they aren’t able to fulfill the obligations of their elected position, well, maybe it’s time to turn the position over to someone who is willing to put out the effort that is required.
If Lockett is strapped for time, perhaps he could take some of his paycheck he gets from the city and hire his own assistant. Problem solved.
Independent reporting for Pine Bluff & Jefferson County since 1879.
Even Council Member Steven Mays, who has had health problems, said that, when he gets a call, he contacts the department head about the matter and assumes it’s been handled. Yes, he said, some help would be appreciated, but it sounded more in the vein of: We’d all like someone to pay the bills and go to the grocery store for us but most of us don’t actually hire a person to do that.
A better idea came from Council Member Joni Alexander (goodness, we are going to miss her sound judgment on the council), who said that possibly some of the secretaries already employed by the city could help out. There’s an idea, although we still think council members ought to deal with their own matters themselves.
It’s always easy to add positions in the face of needs and wants, but then, of course, one has to pay those people and give them benefits and vacation time and sick time, and then someone has to be their boss, etc., etc.
As the mayor said in the story on this subject, some of the raises the city gave are being funded now, but down the road, new money will have to be found to continue funding them. That situation does not at all open the door for adding more personnel — and especially not personnel who would do the work that council members are already paid to do.