Letter: Let’s take charge

I feel the city council hires too many consultants. If we absolutely need to hire a consultant, then we should hire local, not from out of town. We need to reduce spending, not go on spending sprees.
We have the highest water bill in the state of California. And here we go again, hiring another consultant to tell us this. How are they going to find a way to lower the bill to the consumer? Maybe if we had a three in one bill: Water, sewage, and garbage all on one bill. That would be the key to help the people. The city being in charge of their own garbage company, sewage and water company. But, we are still stuck trying to fix the problem with people leaving garage sale signs on poles.
What else could help us? Doing our own 911 dispatch instead of paying $790,000 to another city every year. We are spending money on mats for our city buildings; seems every month we are buying new mats, according to the expenditures. Why can’t we just clean our mats? Also there’s a lot being spent on cell phone bills. One million dollars a year. That’s just a minimum of what else we could be saving on. I say this over and over again. I am sure they are tired of hearing me. But the taxpayer is the one paying for all of this. Where’s the surplus from stolen property that does not get claimed? They should have an auction and create that revenue.
We need coordination and independence within our city by doing things ourselves, getting in order and being efficient and accurate with everything we do. Being organized, hiring more local businesses, local workers for our roads, local street sweepers, better yet having our own city workers doing these types of jobs. We should be working with our local businesses, helping them while they help us; it’s called working together. Apply ourselves in better decision making when it comes to our city and community. Do the research; put in the work.
It’s time to take charge of our city. The people need to put their foot down and speak up. The people deserve to have a voice. This is why I keep asking for a people’s committee. We cannot keep letting the council continue to okay things that hurt the people of the community. It’s better now, than later. Everyone deserves a chance; everyone deserves to be treated equally, including the homeless. We cannot judge a book by its cover. All people are important and deserve to be heard and helped.
Keith Snow, Hollister