I have a good idea for saving the city money, fire Bob Mapes. We pay Mapes a large contractual amount (around $80,000.00). In addition, we pay for his professional dues, seminars, trips. We even pay for his privately owned office building and his privately employed secretary, bringing his toal compensation well over one hudnred thousand dollars.
This raises the interesting question of whether he is an employee of the city. Since he holds the title of City Attorney,he sure smells like an employee. On the other hand, he does not have his offices in a city building and his staff, although paid by the city, are not city employees. Gernally you do not pay outside contractors for both their fees and subsidize their overhead. As it is, we appear to be subsidizing his private law practice, which is sure is what the citizens of Pickerington really want since otherwise Bob might actually have to represent one of our citizens to earn a living and we should not wish that on any of our community members.
Although this subsidization issue is an interesting icing to the tremendous waste of money that is Bob Mapes, the more important point is why do we need him at all. He certainly does nothing to assist citizens. He certainly does not engage in any serious litigation for the city or why we would we be paying hundres of thousands of dollars a year to attorneys like Goldman and Brahm. He cannot even be counted on to provide a simple legal opinion without running to outside lawyers, particulary outside lawyers who also happen to represent developers. Yes, these are the same attorneys who recently told us they would sue the city on behalf of their other clients, the developers. To add insult to injury, some of these attorneys who are threatening suit are also the ones the City is paying our tax dollars to to ''evaluate'' the legality of the petitions, help in ''annexation matters'' and otherwise hinder anything else the voters might think of in the near future. The point is, if we are paying these developers attorneys for thier opinions on issues such as the validity of peitions and annexations, which for some reason Robert Mapes is unable to figure out for himself, why do we need Mapes. You can generally get a ventriloquist dummy for a lot less than what we are shelling out for him. Besides, we do not really need to even pay these outside lawyers for their opinons since we aready know what their opinion is on any question of law: ''Give the developers what they want or else''. Think about it: When have you ever heard Mr. Mapes give an opinion that is contrary to what the devopers want.
For that matter, why do we need city council. Since it is clear that they are also going to vote whatever the developers want, we might as well just have each of the developers designate a councilmember. Think of the money we would save on elections, council salaris, benefits and numerous other petty boondoggles that inhabit the dreams of these leaches. Albiet, it would be somewhat boring without the fun of trying to figure out why each of the elected officals sold out, but at least we wouldn't have to put up with Randy's endless dribble, Lou's glaring at citizens and his unintelligble outbursts, Fox's phony promises and Maxey and Parker's fake sincerity . It would also put Shaver out of his misery. The poor bastard must be getting tired of standing up there all alone trying to actually represent the citizens of Pickerington.
By Clarence Darrow
