Liberty officials need to be frugal with public money

Liberty officials need to be frugal with public money
EDITOR:
Liberty Township trustees' chairman should review spending.
Sound familiar? I have said this for the past five-plus years about Liberty Township, but you have not paid attention. Department heads have use of township vehicles plus a gas credit card, and nobody can tell me how much or what they spend our tax dollars on.
The trustees hired a lawyer to negotiate contracts for every union contract. Please ask them how much that cost.
They hired a human resource professional to help the administrator do his job. Please ask them how much that cost.
They gave a high school-educated secretary over $6,000 in raises the past two years because she is now given the title of administrative assistant. They hired a part-time employee to help the administrative assistant with payroll duties. They have given a high school-educated park administrator over $6,000 in raises the past two years even though she administers only one park. They claim that she helps the administrative assistant and the administrator do their jobs. Why the duplicity? I have suggested the township eliminate Super Blanket Purchase Orders because they never research who and what the checks are for.
Only the clerk and department heads know what vendors and contractors are being paid. Trustees should sign all checks twice a month. Liberty pays every invoice when received no matter what. That is absurd.
Check the landscaping contract signed by the trustees in 2000. I signed it, but the contractor violated the terms every year after the first year. Our legal counsel advised me after I was out of office that the township did not need to amend any landscape contract in writing even though the contract was worth over $15,000, the legal threshold for mandatory bids. He stated that as long as the board of trustees gave a verbal OK, the contractor could change the scope of services provided as well as the cost. No verbal OK was ever given.
The key word at Liberty Township should be frugal.
PATRICK F. DURINA
Youngstown
Give John Kerry a chance;he can't do worse than Bush
EDITOR:
Just about everyday in the newspapers, people run down John Kerry. They say they don't know his ideas, they don't know his personality, they wonder what he is like. They say he doesn't talk much about issues concerning the welfare of us (people). What in the world do they want? He and running mate John Edwards gave two excellent speeches when they were on television in Boston, and they both said what they could and would do, if elected.
All of us had better do something to get a better man in the White House than who's in there, or we'll likely have a disaster, especially in this country if Bush gets another four years. He is unfit to be president of this great nation of ours. He is not for the working class of people who more than anyone helped to make our great nation. He sounds and appears only for the rich and well to do.
By sending our tax money and man- power over to Baghdad, he shows he thinks more of the dirty cutthroats there. They have killed our own people who are helping to bring some kind of order to a failed mission over there, or at least they are trying to -- an almost overwhelming impossibility! I am not one to claim to be an expert on politics. That's not my goal. I'm like anyone else who wants someone in the presidency who cares about the citizens of this country, especially the plain ordinary, everyday working people. But the trouble is, there aren't too many people who have jobs that pay a good wage. There are far too many in this country who don't have a decent way of life.
I believe we have had enough of Bush's four years (too much). Let's get a good man in the White House and get rid of the whole bunch that's in there from the president on down.
John Kerry certainly can't do any worse than what we have in the White House, and I have a hunch he can and will do a lot better. I know how I will vote.
ROBERT COMAN
Berlin Center