Mayor was not avoiding responsibility for the Crossing Guard Program

Dear Editor,

Reference your June 23 letters section. Mr. (John) Drolet should, but doesn’t, understand the form of council/mayoral government that the City of O’Fallon operates under.

We are a strong council/weak mayor form.

To state that Mayor Graham was avoiding the responsibility for the Crossing Guard Program is wrong; that is the council’s responsibility.

I was at all the committee meetings that involved the budget development of the 2016 budget. After the Chief of Police report on the crossing guard program (available to the council in January 2016, not last summer), the chief financial officer specifically discussed the crossing guard funding along with the School Resource funding during a committee meeting. To say that the aldermen never knew that the program was no longer funded is simply not true. My objection to the proposal to use money from the gambling revenue to fund other items was simply my belief that our duty as aldermen is to set policy, not to micromanage the allocation of funds.

That is the professional staff’s job under the policy guidance established by the council. That guidance is in the form of the Strategic Plan (the current one was developed during Mr. Drolet’s tenure as alderman.

The accomplishments of this Mayor and the Councils over the last 20 years of Mayor Graham’s tenue have been substantial. Just look around and compare what you see with 20 years ago.

Jerry Albrecht

Alderman Ward 2

This story was originally published July 11, 2016 at 11:53 AM with the headline "Mayor was not avoiding responsibility for the Crossing Guard Program."