I write my share of letters to the editor out of frustration and disappointment with the actions of the City Council and administration. They insult our intelligence when they pay lip service to us saying they want our input, yet some of them don’t respond to emails or phone calls and make decisions based on input from special interests verses what tax-paying businesses and individuals want. Their decisions on very important issues within our community have cost us a lot of tax dollars and projects they want pushed through in the future will cost us even more. You don’t begin to know all of their plans for the future, because they are reluctant to tell you about them, knowing full well the community would not approve.  To the councilmen who do the job they were elected to do, THANK YOU!

They put their spin on everything they do and say.  Numbers do not lie! Just take a look at The National Citizen Survey. Go to the Community Livability Report, page 5, and look at the table at the bottom of the page. This table covers some very important areas of Albert Lea city government from overall direction, confidence in, acting in the best interest of, being honest and treating residents fairly. The positive approval percentiles in these areas are very disturbing because they range from the mid-20 percent to the mid-30 percent range. The only area that has a fairly good percentile rating is customer service and it is at 65 percent. I believe that number is higher because of the employees of the city who have dedicated their lives and careers to helping the public understand the services being provided to them and listening to their concerns and then trying to help the residents through whatever it is they need.

Read the Aug. 16 Tribune article “Survey: 26 percent of residents have good view of city gov’t.” My question is what about the other 74 percent of residents who are unhappy with city government?   To educate, have an open relationship with or make the public part of the decision-making process and allocate tax dollars into investments and partnerships the community wants, current city government will have to take a whole new direction and with the current people and their personalities in control, I don’t see that happening. I truly hope I am wrong, but if things don’t change and they continue to buy residential and commercial properties the way they are for future projects that they have not yet told you about, they will spend us into so much debt we will never be able to recover.

At a recent agenda meeting they talked about taking $3 million from the general funds $3.8 million reserve and loaning it to themselves for various projects, dictating the terms and allowing themselves to change the terms as they see fit. Does that sound familiar to you? The federal government tried a similar thing with Social Security reserves and look how that has turned out.

 

Gary Hagen

Albert Lea