The weekend school shooting in Colorado makes this a hot topic for the city council tonight. My wife and I received another request from the mayor to show up at tonight's council session to show our support for better security in our public schools.
There seem to be two competing proposals tonight.
The mayor proposes using $1million "donated" by the cemetery department to install police officers, cameras, call boxes and other items to help secure the schools.
Ward 6 proposes rejecting the cemetery donation and instead using reserve funds from the city, that could be used for little things, like emergency snow removal. And also forcing the schools, already struggling to find resources to accommodate growing student head count and Federal mandates to comply with costs of Common Core, to find money elsewhere. And only let the schools get less than half the funds needed for full security upgrades.
Ward 6 is only proposing cameras in the schools. There is no mention of installing police security in the schools, from ward 6.
Ward 6 proposes the schools find $492 thousand somewhere and leave the $1 million donation from the cemetery budget alone.
The cemetery board of directors have testified that they do not need the $1 million dollars for at least three years. And the money is only needed for expansion of the cemetery to accommodate more dead people in the future(three years from now).
I believe the mayor's proposal stands above the lack of clarity in the other proposal. Giving money to help children live, makes more sense than forcing the dead people to sit on their cash to make more burial plots three years from now. God bless them, but the safety of our children is on the line here.
Tonight at 6:30PM in City Hall, the Finance Committee will take up the mayor's proposal once again.
Tonight at 7PM in City Hall, the full city council will take up the competing ward 6 proposal for only half the requested funds.
Contact your city councilor and advocate for our children. We'll make room for our deceased later.
