A pay raise? In a time of economic downturn? When we have a hiring freeze in place to try to keep city spending down? How dare those liberals on city council propose such a thing! And how brazen! I mean, it’d be one thing if we were talking about $1,000 a year across the board, but doubling their salaries – actually more than doubling their salaries?
It’s time that we recall the two girls and …
This just in. It wasn’t the two girls, Chris.
It was one of the guys?
It was one of the guys.
But … it couldn’t be.
Just … couldn’t be.
“I think we just need to be sensitive that we’re giving up personal time, and our own personal businesses, to be here,” said Mayor Tim Williams, who is pushing the issue on city council, and pushing the ire of city residents who think they were sold a bill o’ goods this spring when they voted in what was advertised as a conservative city council that has proven to be anything but.
“If Mayor Williams finds his job requires too much time and responsibility and is dissatisfied with what the position pays, he should resign and focus on running his business,” city resident Byron C.T. Spicer wrote in a letter to the editor of The News Virginian published today. “I am amazed at the audacity of the mayor and the City Council! Does anyone remember Election Day? A new majority was created. New leadership. A new day dawning for the city. Hooray! Right?” former city resident Tim Harrison wrote in a letter to the NV also published today in which he raised issue with the expensive forced departure of former city manager Doug Walker and the aforementioned hiring freeze and on the flip side the water and sewer rate hikes that are being implemented by City Hall.
“Hooray for new leadership?!? Hmmm,” Harrison wrote.
The issue was also a hot topic at the YMCA when I was in for a makeup workout on Sunday. You might remember Dave O’Brien – the loud Noo Yawker who used to haunt City Hall every other Monday and harangue Walker and the two girls, excuse me, Mrs. Dowdy and Mrs. Smith, for me letting myself get carried away there, about anything and everything, really. He briefly and publicly considered running for city council this year, and said when he talked to the paper about the matter that he would do it for free.
“So now the truth finally comes out, huh?” he yelled down the hall at me. “Look, I told people back when I was thinking about running, and nobody believed me, but I said, This job is a full-time job, and it’s going to take that kind of commitment to get it right. Well, now it looks like Tim is starting to realize that.”
Yes, indeed, it does look like the mayor is starting to realize that. God love him, because I know his heart is in the right place. But it was clearly easier to be on the other side of the fence when the two, ahem, ladies and Tom Reynolds were calling the shots, and Williams was pretty much a silent-movie type of city councilman, in that we never heard much from him even as we saw him on the big screen on TV every two weeks. You can’t run for re-election promising to micromanage City Hall with the goal in mind of squeezing the ink out of every last dollar and then turn around six months later and say that you’re going to need more money to do it because it’s taking up all of your free time.
We – and I say we, because remember, I was in the hunt for one of those seats, too – we all know that going in. I remember telling people when I was running that I wasn’t doing it for the big bucks that they pay you. Maybe it was just me, but I actually meant it when I said it.
– Column by Chris Graham
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