Boardman administration is the problem, not patrolmen

Boardman administration is the problem, not patrolmen

EDITOR:

Your July 23 editorial blasting the Boardman patrol officers for rejecting a fact-finding report is based upon false information.

Fact: The OPBA unconditionally offered to reopen negotiations over our contract in February 2008, nearly 18 months ago.

Fact: the OPBA has offered the following concessions:

1) Increase employee health insurance contributions to 10 percent of the monthly premiums.

2) Freeze wages for a period to be agreed upon, but at least through 2009.

3) Reduce vacation leave for current and future officers.

4) Reduce paid holidays for current and future officers.

5) Various changes that would reduce overtime costs.

No matter how much we offered to give, however, it was never enough. Each concession on our part was met with more demands on the township’s part.

The fundamental defect in your editorializing is that it is based solely on an unreliable source: the township administration. Consider these questions:

If the township is headed for fiscal ruin, why did the administration bring back laid-off firemen? Why was a new patrolman hired? Why does the administration continue to claim it intends to hire 10 more officers? If the township can’t afford the staff it has, where will the money for 10 more officers come from? Why is the special audit limited to just the general fund? If this audit is going to show financial problems as the administration claims, why did it insist on rushing into fact finding rather than wait for the audit results, as the union proposed? From our point of view, everything the administration says is contradicted by what it does.

Township government is a very limited form of government. Boards of trustees have very circumscribed legislative and executive power. A board of trustees has two critical functions: budgeting and hiring.

Let’s look at the administration’s track record. A chief of police who brought morale, professionalism and a sense of public service to unprecedented levels was cashiered and replaced with a man who had four years of police experience from over 30 years ago, and who never rose above patrolman.

The prior township administrator was also shown the door and promptly replaced by the summer intern fresh out of college. Mr. Loree has many fine qualities, but experience is not one of them.

Does anyone believe that the trustees are handling their budgeting duties any better than their hiring and personnel duties?

KEVIN POWERS

North Royalton

X The writer is a staff attorney for the Ohio Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association.

Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong

EDITOR:

I have watched the confirmation hearings of Sonia Sotomayor, and I have come with up four reasons she shouldn’t be confirmed.

UShe is comprehensively opposed to the death penalty for convicted first- degree murderers.

UShe supports giving voting rights to convicted murderers who are still serving time in prison.

UShe favors statehood for Puerto Rico, which would increase the danger of America ceasing to be an exclusively English-language country.

UShe has been a member of La Raza, many of the leaders of which favor amnesty for illegal aliens and the return of the southwest U.S. to Mexico.

She will probably be confirmed, and when she votes totally the wrong way on a specific issue of importance to the American people, don’t blame her, blame the senators who confirmed her.

BUD McKELVEY

Hermitage, Pa.