A political posture in Pikeville

It would be easy to applaud the speech by Pikeville Assistant Town Clerk Sherry McAllister. Someone on the inside, a town employee, blowing the whistle on her bosses. She says the board members are to blame for raising water and sewer rates because they are not making the town staff strictly adhere to town billing policies. It’s not the cost of operating the water and sewer departments that is to blame for the increase, it’s the town board’s giving favors out. Then she offers a petition with 300 signatures saying the town should not increase their rates.
Sounds like a Fourth of July flag-waver to me. If we only had a hundred more like her.
Sorry, but it sounds more like grand-standing than good government to me.
There are too many in the town who want to find snakes and bugs under rocks for my taste, and they feed on things like this. “Aha! I told you that things were wrong, twenty years ago, and this just proves it.”
OK, people had their utilities turned on without posting a deposit. The town worked with some people who had gotten behind on paying their utility bills. Did it follow the letter of the law? Are we feeding everybody out of the same spoon? “Aha!”
Show me some people who are stuffing big bags of money at the town hall and taking it home. Show me some people who are making big bags of money because of the favoritism shown by the town staff.
There’s no huge money trail to follow here, or even a little money trail. We are talking about people trying to work with people.
It reminds me of a town board discussion one time about not cutting off utilities on Friday, because they could not make payment until Monday and would have their water or utilities off all weekend. You could cut it off on Monday or Thursday, but not Friday. Sure, they hadn’t paid their utility bill, but which makes more sense as a compassionate person.
Ms. McAllister makes this Grand Canyon leap and says if everything had been done completely properly, it MIGHT have prevented the town from having to raise sewer rates. If it doesn’t rain for six months they might not have to, either, but we know it’s going to rain and we know the billing exceptions won’t come close to balancing water and sewer revenues and expenses.
What she and Commissioner Johnny Weaver are saying is we are on the side of those who want to believe something is wrong in town, and who don’t want to pay higher bills because something is wrong.
There is something to be said for cleaning up practices like making exceptions on deposits, and publicly taking exceptions on paying off utility bills before the board. Maybe it gives some of the old timers something less to try to scrutinize.

Speaking of Commissioner Weaver, he is convinced that in a number of cases the town has been violating state laws, often with the blessing of the town attorney.
I have been to a couple of board meetings where he has spoken and I have to admit that some of his statements make good sense to me. We have as a newspaper dutifully investigated charges which he has levied against the town. Unfortunately, we can’t justify them.
The most recent is the office built for the new town administrator was a violation of the law. The $1500 spent may have offended Mr. Weaver because he didn’t personally approve it, but it clearly wasn’t illegal, or a misappropriation of funds. The money was there for it in the budget, and was needed to be used for that.
It would make for a good headline, too. Town commissioner uncovers illegal acts by town board and town staff. Unfortunately, the facts don’t back it up.
I guess when the facts don’t bear you out, you make up things. Lately we understand that some claim the area newspapers won’t publish the truth about the town, only what the town wants put out. I guess we didn’t really publish that story last week.
Maybe they’ll be saying that the new office caused water and sewer rates to go up. Aha!