- Provide clean, safe water
- Provide for sewage & garbage disposal
- Keep the city or town clean
- Maintain infrastructure such as roads, sidewalks,
parks and streetlights
- Address zoning and building regulations
- Promote economic development
- Provide public transportation
- Provide emergency services coverage: fire, ambulance,
rescue and police
The residents of St. Maries generally enjoy clean,
inexpensive water and satisfactory sewer & garbage disposal services. Our
streets and public areas are clean. Our parks are well maintained and
enjoyable. Our streetlamps work and the town has very pleasant curb appeal.
There is room for improvement with roads, sidewalks, zoning and building
regulations, but these are perpetual issues in any town or city.
Local economic development from City Hall would
benefit greatly from a combination of real-world business experience and
principles of limited government. So, too, would the bureaucratic burden of the
City Code which could be lightened considerably by a ‘limited government
approach’ by City Hall officials.
Emergency Services available to St. Maries are excellent.
This includes the keeping of the peace by the Sheriff’s Office.
The obligation of the Mayor and City Council to
provide safety to the city is well-satisfied under the current arrangement with
the Office of the County Sheriff. There is no observable, measurable increase
in crime or mischief in St. Maries since the dissolution of the city police
department. The job of keeping the peace in St. Maries is getting done – and it
is being done well.
If, for whatever reason, it is the position of City
Hall that more coverage is necessary, then the prudent, and fiscally
responsible, solution is to negotiate with the Sheriff’s Office for more
deputies to be assigned within the city for more hours each day, and to pay the
associated costs for that increase. The Sheriff’s Department has the
experience, resources, and infrastructure already in place, and is, in fact,
already doing the job.
Adding another layer of bureaucracy to City Hall
and another major tax burden to the residents of St. Maries is not good
governance. Adding the burden of an entire police department onto the shoulders
of city residents, for the benefit of increasing parking ticket revenue, goes
beyond mismanagement and waste. It rises to the level of abuse of power. What it
would accomplish, besides an expansion of government, is creation of a
police force that answers directly to the Mayor’s Office.
the Sheriff ’s Office and Deputies?
Fix our sidewalks, without forcing the cost on
business owners. Fill our potholes. Survey property lines and reduce the
burdens being imposed on property owners seeking to improve their homes. Roll back
the redundant, expensive, and intrusive building permit process recently
adopted by City Hall. Cut the ridiculously over-priced fees imposed on
businesses operating within the city. Cut extraneous and nanny-state ordinances
from the City Code. Or, stop adding to it.
Lead with genuine economic development. Or, get
out of the way of business leaders who know how to get it done and want St.
Maries to thrive and grow in new directions as our local economy evolves.
When it comes to keeping the peace in St. Maries,
City Hall should not be in the business of trying to fix what ain’t broke.
