Editor:
I read a letter to the editor in The New Era that suggested city employees should have their benefits reduced and have their cost-of-living increases removed.
While I feel it is a good idea to have an efficiently run city, be as frugal as possible, I don’t feel the above would be a good idea.
This is because the city of Sweet Home has many employees who perform highly specialized work. You can’t find people to do these jobs just anywhere. Some of these jobs require years and years of learning and training.
To put this in a perspective that might be easier to understand, if you have a newer model automobile and it is not running, could you get just anybody to fix it? The answer is, no. You would need someone who had the knowledge and training to properly repair it. And you have to pay for this if you want the job done right. If you refigerator broke, could just anyone fix it? The answer is, no.
I suggest you visit our water treatment plant, sewage treatment plant and building permit office for starters. It is amazing what some of these city employees are requried to do on a daily basis. Part of the water treatment plant looks like a chemistry laboratory, with test flasks and test equipment. The employees are required to perform all sorts of tests to be sure our drinking water is up to par. Would you be able to test our water?
Our sewage treatment plant has an “industrial grinder” installed in the scheme of things. What if the grinder stopped working? Would you know if it was working or not? Would you know what do to get it running again?
On a visit to our building permit department, I went and asked if I could use a product called Micore as part of a hearth I was constructing. I wanted to know if the R-value would meet building code requirements. I received a speedy and accurate answer to my question. Would you know the answer to this question?
I can go on and on.
The fact is we have many highly trained city employees. I also know that some of these people are not paid as much as they could be making elsewhere. I suspect they would rather work for less pay and live in Sweet Home than live in a large city.
Anyway, the general idea is to try to keep these people working for the city. I don’t think they would keep working for the city if their cost-of-living raises were cut along with their benefits.
Personally, I would rather not have to go poking around the sewage treatment plant attempting to fix industrial grinders and the like. I think I would prefer to pay someone else to do this.
Bill Davis
Sweet Home