Reader can’t believe county bought pickups

To the editor:

Unbelievable! How does a county with a population of not quite 30,000 justify giving each of our 5 supervisors a full-size pickup truck? 

They just purchased four new vehicles this month. Where do they go and what exactly what do they do every day to justify this outrageous expense plus fuel, maintenance and insurance?

They could easily use their personal vehicle and claim the Federal allowance of $0.575 per mile and get reimbursed without adding to our tax burden, or even buy only 1 truck for sign-out availability. It is not likely that all 5 would be the road at the same time.

This is just one more financial misstep on the part of our county leaders. Over $1 million went missing on the recent overtime scandal. How can they administer a budget and not realize that a large amount of money was missing until discovered by the state auditor? 

They robbed over $1 million from our road funds to cover losses on solid waste operations which are supposed to be self-supporting. Almost $500,000 has not been paid back and yet they want to raise our monthly garbage pick up fees with a third of the county not paying. It would make more sense to have everyone paying before raising any rates. 

They installed a lift at the Coliseum which sits empty most of the time while the Booker T. Washington gym badly needs repair and the Westside swimming pool has been closed for years. Over $300,000 was recently spent for voting machines (scanners) plus annual software maintenance of $20,000. 

This expense could have been reduced significantly by consolidating some of our 27 voting precincts.

David Carter

Philadelphia