I am writing to express my concern at not one, but two articles in the April 4 edition of the American Journal. The first that caught my attention was the front page article announcing that the city and school finance departments have not been able to find a way to merge into one, costing myself and the rest of Westbrook’s taxpayers almost $200,000 to create seven new positions and duplicating payroll and accounts payable functions, according to the mayor.

If the newspaper had been released a few days earlier, I might have assumed this was an April Fool’s joke. In what world is it acceptable for city departments (like the school) to just decide “it’s not the direction they want to go”? Maybe I’m just nai?ve in the way that city government functions, but it seems to me that if the governing bodies decide that merging these two departments together makes the most financial sense for the city, then that’s how it is. If staff are “having a hard time figuring out who to report to and adjusting to the differences in management styles,” that’s no reason to throw our hands in the air and give up on consolidation efforts.

The people in charge clarify the new structure and expectations, and the staff of these two departments either figure out how to make it work or they get replaced with new employees who can handle the change. That’s how the business world works, and I don’t see why the city would be run any other way.

It certainly seems like the City Council is more than willing to tell some city departments how to operate, including the fire department, which brings me to the next article of concern on page 11 of the same issue. City Councilor Victor Chau has proposed closing Fire Station 3. Specifically, he wants to “save Westbrook money and increase safety for firefighters.” Apparently the safety concern is that Station 3 is frequently understaffed and results in additional overtime costs, so the proposed solution is simply to close the station down. However, as Chief Pardue pointed out, Station 3 is located on the outskirts of Westbrook on Bridgton Road, and eliminating Station 3 would greatly increase the fire department’s response time to that area.

Does anyone else see the irony in having these two articles in the same paper? Maybe I’m missing something. Are we really planning to increase the staffing by $200,000 in the city and school finance offices while simultaneously proposing that we close down a fire station because the fire department’s staffing costs are $100,000 over budget?

I am not in favor of taking away from necessary community services and jeopardizing the safety of residents just to add duplicative finance administration. Personally, I would rather direct taxpayer funds to the fire department to increase their staffing instead of the two finance offices and solve several problems at the same time. If the city and school finance departments can’t work together and do their jobs efficiently, then put people in there who can. We should not pay for more finance office staff in unnecessary new positions. We do need a strong fire department, so don’t downsize our safety. Let’s get our priorities straight in Westbrook.

Charity Hirst

Westbrook