The city of Kent needs to switch gears at City Hall.
The present system keeps going from one financial loss to another. It’s time to save more than $145,000 per year funding the mayoral position. Kent already has a city administrator.
Instead, we should change to a City Council-mayor system where the council elects one of its members to a two-years stint as mayor while adding approximately $23,000 to that person’s salary for that time span, then another council person can be voted in.
Mayor Suzette Cooke will ride off into the sunset with a big retirement after leaving behind a large mismanagement of city government. During her first campaign she said she would stop the HUD housing buildup in Kent. More than 50 percent of the housing units are owned by HUD, which doesn’t pay city, county or state taxes. At the same time, they require probably 95 percent of police protection and fire response and fill our schools with kids requiring free breakfast and lunch.
Mismanagement just keeps running on and on. The golf course has been a money drain for years. The ShoWare Center continues to lose money. Now I read it will cost $2.4 million to $3.4 million to get out of the Pine Tree Park deal. Someone sure wants to sleep on that deal.
When you build a welfare city it’s impossible to fund city services, not to mention the governor funneling large portions of state tax money to the Indian tribes.
The people who really suffer from all this mismanagement are seniors and people on fixed incomes.
– Gene Bremner
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