Are We As Good As We Can Be?

Early morning is probably my favorite part of the day.  With WKMS-FM on, a knife in hand and the obligatory cup of coffee nearby, I am ready to cut and wrap the daily baked goods for Etcetera Coffeehouse.  There was a story on this Saturday’s Only A Game that has put me in a mood.  NFL’s Mike Ditka was the segue to the city of Aliquippa, Pennsylvania’s descent from a steel city of 30,000 when he played high school football there to a much smaller and grittier town of 9500 today. 

So here’s the deal.  If you are pretty happy with the way things are going in Paducah, just re-elect all of the incumbents plus one and don’t question are we as good as we can be.

I do question.

Things may seem O.K., at least on the surface, but I want to hope our best days are ahead of us. Like you, I want my daughter to enjoy success at the coffeehouse.  It’s just that I have the gnawing feeling that maybe it isn’t going to be like that.  

So, instead of accepting the way it has always been, I have chosen to go down a different path.  Please join me in voting for Brandi Harless for mayor.

I just don’t want to be another Aliquippa.

It’s been a while since we have talked.

Well, I suppose the local election season shall kick off a bit after Labor Day, and I have a small problem.  It’s the yard signs.  Being the resident cheap skate that I am, I have not invested in new ones for quite some time, since my first run in 2012.  And that is the rub--I only have a small number of yard signs left.

So here’s the deal.  If you think you would like to support me and live on a street where someone might actually see the yard sign, then just give me a call, text, or email, and I will come by your house and install it.

If this fails to get rid of them, then the remaining signs will be in a box inside the front door at Etcetera and you may pick one up and do the leg work.

As always, thank you for the kind words and support.

Allan

allanrhodesjr@gmail.com

270 366 4539

A Businessman's Perspective

As a businessman I am expected to pick the very best person for the job.  

As your City Commissioner you should expect no less from me in recommending the very best person for the City’s Top Job.

I helped to recruit Brandi Harless.  I would encourage you to check out her website at brandiharless.com and see for yourself why I’m voting for Brandi Harless.

Allan Rhodes

Happy People and City and County working together……..

That is not a misprint.  And for those of you who participated in the Spring Dump Day this Saturday past know exactly what I am talking about.  I got to be my own “blog reporter,” and here are my impressions.

The McCracken County Emergency Management crew of Robert and Tom were holding down the fort at the corner of 8^th and Burnett.  Directing traffic to join the line on 10^th.  Fortunately no emergencies when I arrived late in the morning.

The line was in the queue at the Republic Transfer Facility.  After “checking in” with Pam and Chris tallying marks, cars filed into the transfer yard.  If the cars were primarily not metal items they turned left by the city garbage trucks.  Those rear loading hydraulic cylinders made quick work in crushing up all that Justin and his cohorts could feed into them.  It did a spectacular job on an old BBQ grille.  Very impressive.

If you had lots of tires, then you made your way to the power hook of Liberty Tire of Marion, KY.  Lots and lots of tires being loaded into 53 foot open top trailers.  I must say that there was this trailer that suspiciously had a lot, I mean a lot of tires.  No markings of a company, just probably more tires than one household could accumulate in a lifetime.

The County Road Department handled the people with mostly metal to recycle.  Jesse, one of the County Road guys, told me about the person who brought in a nearly new riding tractor with seized bearings.  Several of the guys did find tires and a battery that served the county very well.  Guess that tractor was recycled twice.  Best part for the road crew according to Jesse was with all this recycling, it made their life easier not finding junk piled in the out of the way places all over our county.

Though offered lunch by the Republic people, I was back out to the line of vehicles and more often than not their trailers.  As for numbers, we, the City and County, had twice the volume as last year.  Hundreds and hundreds of citizens making their community look better.

So there you have it, pretty day, happy County and City folks making our neighbors pleased.  Makes a person happy.

Mea Culpa….

I think I have let myself down.  I think I have let you down.  I’m talking about this whole city hall project.  As you know RATIO, the architectural firm, will have a public presentation Monday at the City Hall.  That’s why I’m blogging.  I expect a lot out of me, and right now I feel like my work, representing you, on city hall has been, well, let’s just say I’m not very happy with myself.

As you remember, one of my earlier blogs was about city hall dying.  Little did I know about the true state of structural disrepair.  We knew we had a problem when, by the late spring of 2014, the fourth engineering study was complete.  The first study was in 1978, a scant 14 years after the dedication of City Hall, and it said that the roof structure was bending down.  The engineers confirmed that and went on to say that doing nothing was probably not a long strategy worth pursuing. 

Having said all this, here is where I failed as your commissioner. Simply put, I got focused on the project of renovation or new build with all the intendant controversy, without really thinking ahead on the “how do we pay for this.”  And that‘s what really got to me.  I always think about the money.  Well, until this time.  Regardless of what the news media may opine, we cannot rebuild or renovate a complete City Hall, in my view, without a stable, long term funding source of unencumbered money.

I continued to fail you by not thinking clearly about a third alternative to new build or renovate City Hall, a step-by-step, pay as you go heavy repair of the existing structure.  Hopefully, this will be apparent by isolating those costs within the renovate model of City Hall provided by Ratio Architects.

Finally, I never really had a discussion with the other commissioners or the mayor about the road we were taking.  Of course, they didn’t engage me either.  So much for my acting in isolation and ignoring the benefits of collective wisdom.

Well, that’s about it.  As I said, I’m not very happy with me.  I think I could have been a better commissioner.  I’m sorry to have let you down.

Allan