It's been a while since I posted, but not because Abilene is full of liberty and wise spending by our leaders. The City Council has enacted a city-wide smoking ban in all places of business. This infringement against Free Enterprise is a preposterous move toward a Nanny State (or Nanny City, in this case), where a business owner SHOULD be able to choose how to operate a business and allow or disallow smoking as he or she pleases. Moreover, a tax freeze for those over 65 has been enacted with no plan on how to redistribute tax revenues to cover the gap; tax hikes for the rest of us are expected.
In the midst of all this, an article appeared today in the ARN that shows even more heinous spending of tax monies. An edited excerpt follows, without comment from me.
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The city of Abilene is paying more than $40,000 to a consultant from Tennessee to deal with leadership issues within the fire department.
After three months of relationship-building exercises, communication development strategies and counseling for some members of the department, some firefighters are still calling for the fire chief's resignation.
And more services from the Norton Development Group have been scheduled for next week that will cost the city at least $6,000 - not including the cost of the consultant's stay here.
Bob Norton, the consultant who has been providing services to the city, is the founder and CEO of NDG, a Tennessee-based consulting firm. He was hired by the city in October. The city, so far, has paid $34,527.63 to bring Norton here.
Despite these efforts, Grady Sheppard, president of the Abilene Professional Firefighters Association, said last week that a committee within the association is documenting problems the membership says it is having with Chief Brad Fitzer. The chief, who has been with the department since October 2003, wasn't available for comment Thursday.
Generally, contracts that exceed $25,000 have to go before the City Council for approval. Norton's hiring didn't, however, because there isn't a contract between the city and Norton, City Manager Larry Gilley said.
''We're really doing this on an as-needed basis,'' Gilley said.
City Councilman Anthony Williams said ''the council has not made this (hiring a consultant) an issue because it has not been an issue.''
''When you have over 1,000 employees, inevitably you're going to have employee-relation issues that will arise from time to time,'' Williams said. ''We allow our chief administrator (in this case, the city manager) to handle his responsibilities and oversee the responsibilities that we have given him, which include his employees.''
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Williams acknowledged he couldn't say whether Norton's services were worth the city's investment because he said he has not studied Norton's proposals. He also did not know how much the city had paid Norton.
