Mayor’s Row…….by Ned Mitchell
With a sigh of relief we are all most happy to know that a budget has been passed by those daring public servants we call Senators, Representatives, and the reformer/unreformer governor in Springfield. What a back breaking, brow beating, sweat filled month it has been as they toiled day and night to make our lives easier during the coming year. Not the Senators or Representatives, the magic three, Speaker Madigan, President Jones, and the reformer/unreformer. You see they hammered out a budget and then to get the rest of the crew to vote for it they put in enough pork to make that happen. You will have to admit the democrats have invented a new way of exclusion by leaving the republican party completely out of the back room wheeling and dealing. When I was in Springfield and the republicans controlled everything at least they let the two democrat leaders in on the fix. The dangerous part of doing it this way though is not only do you take all the credit for the budget, you take all the credit! That means when folks who will have to pay the bill figure out all the goodies you have bestowed on each other I’m guessing they will be furious with the democrats. When they figure out you all are going to get a 13% pay raise right after the November election that won’t be pretty. When state employees and retired teachers find out that you robbed their pension fund for the second year in a row, that won’t be pretty either. Your pension got robbed unless you are a state legislator or a Chicago teacher that is. Wonder why their pension systems were not robbed?
Having said all of that I thought we would give the Springfield fiasco the Sesser test. You know if it won’t fly in Sesser, chances are it won’t fly up there either. Suppose you are a Mayor or Alderman and you have not had a pay raise in several years. Yeah, like in Sesser where it has been about 16 years with no pay raise. I know, these local jobs are supposed to be part time jobs. But wait, state legislators also call themselves part time as most of them have other jobs. The only difference is they have part time jobs with full time benefits. Where else can you have a part time job and get full medical coverage and a pension that would make a General Motors executive blush?
Anyhow, supposing you are a local elected official and you think you deserve a little bump in pay. On the local level you must pass that resolution or ordinance immediately before you run for re-election. In Illinois the Senators will vote on their pay raise a week after the election. Talk about convenience! They can run for re-election and then vote their salary! Actually they don’t even have to vote; they can just not talk about it and get the pay raise anyhow. The way that scam goes is a pay commission recommends what their salary should be and then it starts if both the House and Senate do not vote to stop it. Just who set this law up for local officials to vote on their pay raise before the election? Of course, it is the same group who made the law that says they don’t have to vote until after the election. Amazing!
Another Sesser test will be applied to the whole budget process. We just passed our Appropriation Ordinance that is a model or blueprint for what we anticipate that we will budget for Sesser the coming year. It is a huge guess anyway you want to look at it. We have no idea of how much money we will take in during the next 12 months or what our costs will be. By law we must pass this ordinance so we make a guess and do it. All the Aldermen have a copy of the proposed ordinance in advance of the vote and all have the opportunity to pick it apart, add or delete, ask questions and discuss it before a vote is taken. It is even on public inspection for the taxpayers to look over.
In Springfield the budget is put together behind closed doors by three people as mentioned in the opening paragraph of this column. There is no public inspection and legislators debate less than 4 hours before they vote to spend $56 billion dollars. This year as usual different groups of legislators have to be dealt with to get their votes. On the democrat side the Legislative Black Caucus and the Latino Caucus threatened to withhold their votes unless their demands for cash were met. It came down to 4 Latino Senators holding the democrat controlled Senators collective feet to the fire. The democrats have to have these 4 votes to pass the budget because no republicans were included in the process so it had to be done. And really you can’t fault the minority caucus because this is the only way they get any goodies for their people.
So let’s bring that home to Sesser. Suppose I put out our annual appropriation ordinance last week and some of the Aldermen said before you get our votes we will have to have all new sidewalks in our ward. Another could say I want a new park built in my ward. Another might say I need to see more police officers employed and working in my ward. Of course that never happens in Sesser which even further amazes me that we let it go on in Springfield. We don’t do business that way in local government and we should not allow it to go on in Springfield. If that is good government, I’ll eat my hat, I’ll even eat the Chicago Bears favorite hat of mine if you can prove that is good government. We should demand more of our part time elected officials!
If you were in Sesser on Saturday and survived you are lucky. The annual town wide yard sale drew hundreds of people from all over Southern Illinois. Merchants and convenience stores all reported record days of sales and folks here got rid of a lot of items they no longer need. I have not thrown a tee shirt away in 30 years but the wife sold some anyway in her yard sale. The weather was perfect and folks were in a buying mood as car loads of people lined up looking for that something special. Other area towns will be having huge yard sales in the next few weeks and I’ll do my best to get out and buy things I don’t need to put in the garage that I can resell next year in our yard sale! Did I just say that?
A note of apology to families with loved ones buried at Maple Hill Cemetery. Last week I patted the VOLUNTEERS on the back who donated a day to clean the cemetery. Apparently some flowers from some monuments were removed and discarded by mistake. We certainly want to apologize for that and I want to personally say to each offended person that I am sorry this incident happened. I will further promise you that it will not happen again. We are in the midst of working up some rules for the cemetery and this is one thing that will be considered. We are having a problem with some folks scattering hooks on graves in the cemetery as well as extending monuments at the foot of the graves. This is becoming a problem not only for the mowers but also for our grave diggers. While we appreciate your dedication to honoring your loved ones you must remember that we have to have room in the cemetery to dig graves on all four sides of your loved ones. If we allow upright monuments at the foot of the graves we cannot maneuver around to dig other graves. That is one thing that is proposed to be eliminated. If you want to have a second monument on a grave it will have to be they type that is flush with the ground. As for Shepard hooks, they will have to be located right up against the monument and not out on the grave.
Again, I apologize, it was not anyone’s intent to cause any family member any additional grief and if it helps you to discuss this matter please feel free to give me a call at 625-3611 or 625-5322 or write nedmitchell@verizon.net or www.sesser.org and I will listen to your concerns and do my best to help you.
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