Dooley says region’s leaders must “reposition” local economy
Dooley
St. Louis County Executive Charlie Dooley late this afternoon reacted to the announcement of that Anheuser-Busch Inbev would eliminate about 1,000 jobs in St. Louis. In a statement, he promised to work with regional leaders to “reposition our local economy” to overcome the economic slowdown.
Here is what the statement said:
“Anheuser-Busch InBev’s announcement means that we will have to work even harder to come up with ways to reposition our local economy to create hope for better opportunities for our citizens. It also means we need to work in a regional way to overcome the economic difficulties that our community and this entire country are facing. As St. Louis County executive, I pledge that I will work with all of our regional leaders to work for answers to this economic crisis.”
Hold on to your wallets! It isn’t enough that we are borrowing and wasting billions, soon to be trillions on the fake, ineffectual bail out on the national level but now we will get an opportunity to repeat it locally.
Mr Dooley and his staff should take a close look at spending within the county whether it be police,public works,highways or traffic. It doesn’t matter, there is gross negligence in their spending practices.
Thousands and thousands are being spent needlessly on things that are unnecessary and are frankly a joke. Spending on things not needed and not spending on things that are needed has gone on for years. I’ll be willing to bet that if everyone would stop spending on their pet projects the county would save a substantial amount of money, maybe enough to fix the things that need fixed. And then have enough to give the hard workers with scrupples a descent raise. What the public doesn’t know is that county employees are underpaid and underappreciated. Although it’s been said that there will be no layoffs I know for a fact that if someone quits or retires, they don’t replace that position. How many hundreds of thousands of dollars were saved there? And why wasn’t that money given to the workers who are now working twice as hard as they were but are not even getting raises in 2009. There simply needs to be more oversight from the top. To anyone who’s reading this, even with more oversight there’s still going to be a need for a small tax increase because the county buildings and strutures are literally falling apart. The buildings can’t stand forever without major overhauls. Try visiting your local county park. Are the pools in good working order? Are the ice rinks in good shape? Are the grounds being taken care of like they use to be? How are your roads? Are those pot holes getting filled right away,or does it take weeks to get them fixed? Are the traffic lights working properly? Do you have enough police officers? How is all their equipment? Out of date maybe?
How about hiring some competant accountants and NOT giving yourselves raises this year. I mean, nobody else working for county is getting one. (unless they’re a regional leader that is)