November 22, 2009 City Center Closing at 3:30 PM on Fridays

[UPDATED] There was an announcement in today's Sunday paper that the City Center would be closing at 3:30 PM on Fridays beginning December 4.

Now, if you had a business that served the public, would you shut your business down completely for 1-1/2 hours on Friday afternoons or would you rotate employee shifts slightly so that you could be open everyday as usual until 5:00?

Well, if you had a business and had to cut back on employee hours but still truly wanted to serve the public, you would have some people come in and work on Friday from 8-2:30 and others would be scheduled to come in and work on Friday from 10:30-5. That way you are open from 8-5 as usual and those customers who can't get in by 3:30 can still be accommodated.

But if you are Morristown city government, you just shut everything down completely for 1-1/2 hours on Friday afternoon. This decision shows that the city has little concern for the taxpaying public and does not want to apply logic and business-sense to keep the city operating during normal hours with just a slight change in work shifts.

Is this part of a plan to get people to accept another round of increases in fees and taxes? 

A complete and detailed examination of the city budget, city revenue, and city expenditures is desperately needed.

For years and years, the Mayor and Councilmembers have relied on inflated revenue projections and have passed an inflated spending plan and then walked away allowing the City Administrator to switch money around and pretty much spend all the money however he wanted.

Maybe the next newspaper announcement will be that the Mayor and Councilmembers will be meeting at a very quiet City Center on Friday afternoons at 3:30 PM to figure out what has been going on and to set up a system of checks and balances for real accountability in the future.