Skate Park

The City is considering some win-win solutions to the issue of skate park graffiti and vandalism. For that, our Commission and staff should be commended.

I want to remember one thing, though. The City previously spent in excess of $30,000.00 of taxpayer dollars on a video surveillance system, a system that has failed to provide any meaningful relief to the problem. A professional manager would do more than shrug at this failure (City Employee Giles "Salyer said kids would damage or turn security cameras at the site, so that they were 'basically destroyed' and had to be turned off.)

If you operated a business and encountered a problem that your employee spent $30,000.00 to fix, would you accept such an explanation for its failure? Wouldn't you at least ask some questions?

Are the cameras broken, or just turned? Did they ever work? It is standard industry practice that security cameras include in their observation other cameras (to prevent vandalism of cameras); was this done here? If so, what do the other cameras show? Who broke the cameras? Who designed the system? If it was a third party vendor, have we approached them about this failure? Is this a warranty issue? Can the cameras be screened in or otherwise protected? Would the cameras have rendered usable video in any event? Who thought up this idea?

I certainly have not heard these questions raised at a meeting. Are these discussions occurring?

I recognize that this is a difficult question, and good solutions are hard to come by. But if the City Commission and staff want to know why they face cynicism and distrust from taxpayers, they need look no further than this example. $30,000.00 of public money was spent, and there is absolutely no accountability. By anyone.

No one can believe someone would act this way with their own money. And yet it is our money. But some people are willing to spend and waste it as though it did not take people many, many hours of toil to earn it before the City spent it. On cameras. That failed.

Shrug.