At Monday’s Public Works Committee meeting, Coeur d’Alene City Councilman Dan Gookin proposed that the City Council should have the authority to vote on merit pay increases for City department heads. In today’s skewspaper article headlined Proposal gets no merit, Press skewswriter Tom Hasslinger sought to portray Gookin’s proposal as nothing more than a potentially unlawful intrusion on the Mayor’s authority.
Look a little deeper and closer at what Councilman Gookin’s effort accomplished.
First, based on Gookin’s effort the public should now clearly understand that the responsibility for high merit pay for City department heads rests squarely on the Mayor and City Administrator’s shoulders. If the merit pay is unwarranted but has been routinely given, blame the Bloemster and Gabriel.
Second, and this may be of greater importance, Gookin’s raising the issue clearly informs the public that the Council does have and has for years had the ability to control pay through the budget process. So why hasn’t the Council exercised this stewardship in the past? Because until Dan Gookin and Steve Adams were elected to the City Council, none of the Council members had the will or the skill to do the diligent line-by-line examination necessary to try and understand where the public’s money has been going. If they had, and if the City’s Finance Director/Treasurer Troy Tymesen was as competent as the Mayor and some members of Council would like people to believe, then the embezzlement by Sheryl Carroll would likely have been caught earlier or completely prevented.
Well done, Councilman Gookin!
Bill as a low down dirty liberal I have to disagree, I think that Dan suggesting the council and not just the queen should have say over the dept heads was a pure sign of arrogance. How can a monarchy be maintained if people like Dan keep trying to be good stewards of the city and public trust?
Comment by Mike Teague — August 15, 2013 @ 2:28 pm
Sort of off subject. Just read a post on the CDA blog that equipment at McEuen had been vandalized. Nothing in the Press, no surprise there. Does anyone know anything about this? Shouldn’t this information be in the public domain? I thought perhaps Dan would know something.
Comment by rochereau — August 16, 2013 @ 3:56 pm
I’ve not yet received a reply to my queriers on the topic of vandalization at McEuen. Staff is good about informing us of such incidents, as they did with Ramsey Park. I do know that the park is being patrolled.
If I hear anything one way or another, I’ll let you know with a later post.
Comment by Dan Gookin — August 16, 2013 @ 8:54 pm
Thank you Dan!
Comment by rochereau — August 17, 2013 @ 8:43 am
Here’s the scoop:
I just got off the phone with Doug Eastwood.
Apparently some kids (although I don’t know the exact sex or ages) were caught tagging something in McEuen. This happened before the contractor hired security. The kids were caught, convicted, and sentenced to community service. That’s been it for vandalism at the field. The contractor reported a laptop stolen out of an (apparently unlocked) truck, but that’s not vandalism.
I asked about any other forms of vandalism, including damaging equipment and so on. Doug says nothing like that has happened. So the comment on the CDA Press blog site was completely erroneous.
Comment by Dan Gookin — August 19, 2013 @ 11:05 am
Thanks to rochereau for asking the question, and thanks to Councilman Dan Gookin for a timely and complete answer.
Comment by Bill — August 19, 2013 @ 11:24 am
Thanks Dan. Tagging is now a world wide problem I’ve seen it all over Europe sadly. There are those who claim it as art, not even close. That they were caught and had to pay a penalty is a good thing. That this story went unreported is not, simply because the fact that there were consequences for this behavior should be publicly disseminated.
Comment by rochereau — August 19, 2013 @ 1:05 pm