“So here is the deal…..
This is almost laughable. Port Orange Fire Lieutenant Joe Meeske took to Facebook over the weekend to blast his buddies on the council for not handing over the keys to the City’s vault. Here is what he posted;
Joe Meeske
19 hrs ago on Facebook
“So here is the deal…..
If you are a local politician and you served in the fire service or in law enforcement and you had the support of your brothers and sisters in your election effort then you dont get to distance yourself from them because you are afraid of what the vocal minority might say about you. I am a little tired watching candidates that I supported, Drew Bastian, Scott Stiltner and Bob Ford, distance themselves from their true base.
Nobody is asking you to be a shill for any department but the least you can do is publicly acknowledge some level of support for higher pay and better benefits for firefighters and police. What happened here in the past is shameful but yet you all sit on the dias and say nothing. It appears there is a fear that the seven activist citizens might use your name on the local blog to say you were in the pocket of public safety. Who Cares!!!! There are like seven of them reaching a total of like 25 citizens in a city of 60,000 but yet you cower behind the fear of being labeled.
Now Stiltner will go on record and say he did not accept any donantions from the local unions, and he did not… But he sure did not turn down any help from union members to hold signs, be vocally supportive or give him their vote! Bastian worked for the fire department and council meeting after council meeting he sits silent on the issue of pay and benefits being too low! Ford was the police chief and needed our support for a final push in a runoff election but he only acknowledges the fact that the unfunded liability is too high…
These three public safety officials need to come out publically and address the issue of pay and benefits. I agree the unfunded liability is too high… But you three know exactly why that is… .But you still create the public impression that benefits were the problem. It was not the benefits received that caused the problem. .It was the citys historic under funding of the pension plans.. And we all know finance has proved over and over again that they have not funded a number of programs correctly. New issues are uncovered weekly!! And we continue to try to fix these problems on the backs of the employees with lower wages and lower benefits.
So Drew Bastian, Scott Stiltner and Bob Ford all three of you receive a pension check from the city… Until you come out and recind your right to that pension check do not sit up there and tell me I do not somehow deserve the same benefit for my service. Stop being afraid to acknowledge those you served with by doing what is right! After all the wrongs that have occured over the last 8 years its getting harder and harder to watch the three of you distance youselves from the public safety sector and take a stand against the very benefit you receive each month!!
If I wanted more of the same I would have voted for more of the same!!”
Boy, that didn’t take long for the Fire Department to try and call in huge favors from the bench. Just like everyone predicted. Sounds like someone needs a good nap. Oh yeah, he will get to do that on the tax payers dime! Is the fire department really asking for more in their pensions at time when their pension plan is failing and costing the tax payers of Port Orange millions a year in band aid fixes to the plans? And what does he mean, “their true base?” Isn’t their base supposed to be the taxpayers of the City? Talk about a messed up perspective. Hold your ground council members, our city has a lot of needs right now far more pressing then lining the pockets of short sighted firefighters. Our Fire Department doesn’t need any raises or new pension bennies. Most of them make over $60K a year, which is about $35k more than the average income of Port Orange. This Fire Lieutenant has too much pressure in his hose. Sure do miss the days of volunteer firefighters!
What about the crappy ass pay scale for Utility employees? Without them the firemen wouldn’t have any water to put out the fires or sanitary water to drink or to bathe? What would they do when they have to take a shit? Not to mention Utility personnel have to be licensed by the state.and held criminally responsible for their job performance. I doubt a lot of the firemen could pass the A & B tests to be licensed for water and waste water it’s tough. I’m not putting down fire or police but lets face it these people are as much responsible for public safety as fire and police and are totally underpaid and under appreciated by most.
This is one fight even Ted is afraid of.
There are many inequalities throughout the City of Port Orange workforce but the greatest lack of equanimity is the hiring of FCCMA retread administrators and retread administrators in general. Port Orange hires 99% of its employees from the most humble of entry level positions through progressively higher positions, through middle management and right up to assistant department heads at the bottom of the pay grade for that respective position. Some of these individuals have faithfully worked for the city for decades, There used to be 20 progressive 2.5% incentive steps so that in the course of 20 years if a committed employee consistently demonstrated satisfactory performance and increased their value as an employee they could realize the top out of their respective salary range by earning their way to the top. These employees were subject to background investigations and if they were fired from previous jobs we did not hire them. About 8 years ago the city eliminated the incentive steps and now falsely advertises these positions as having a specific salary range full well knowing that anyone hired will never receive an incentive increase and will thereby never make more than the entry level pay in the position they are hired in and be able to provide a decent life style for their loved ones as long term citizens of Port Orange. This is the way mayor Allen Green likes it as he thinks of long term city employees the same way he thinks of all the immigrant construction workers he has hired in his construction company during the past years that were not American citizens and that in his mind did not deserve to make a living salary for their families.
On the other hand, the City of Port Orange hires untested department heads right in the door at the top out salary and sometimes above the top out salary for the position they are hired for. Administrators are predominately hired from among the ranks of the FCCMA and are usually Managers In Transition or hacks that have been fired from their past assignments. A classic example of this was our previous city manager Greg Kisela who any moron with slightly more intelligence than a mongoloid could do a simple internet search and see that he has made an entire career interloping from assignment to assignment and riding the FCCMA MIT gravy train running from one scandal after another..Many of our most recent hires are out of work administrators that have been forced to resign from their most recent assignments. We have a propensity for hiring shit canned administrators in Port Orange, and the council seems to think that this is the norm and that we cannot do any better.
The previously fired hacks do not have to earn their way up like other employee stakeholders have done in the past over a period of 20 years. To add insult to injury, our middle managers with as many as 10 years service are near entry level and have no hope of ever earning a living wage no matter how long they work for the city. The mayor and the city council does not seem to care, and three of the council members have retired with top out salaries and great pensions. The mentality there is I got mine and that’s all that matters, now that I am elected I will go with the FCCMA flow.
The benefit of city councilmen and the city manager hiring a bunch of political managerial hacks (groomed and schooled in the FCCMA which is an affiliate of the Florida League of Cities) for well over six figure unearned starting salaries is that these hacks have no integrity and are willing to sell their souls in the service of corrupt politicians and the administrative elite. They are well versed in the do’s and do not’s of special interest politics, political whitewashing, scapegoating, and blacklisting of anyone who believes in open and transparent governance. This is apparently the model that the mayor and our present council continues to embrace because it is easier to waste the taxpayer’s money on high priced expendable at will hacks that can be easily used as scapegoats themselves if ever accountability points to our elected officials. The recycling process goes on ad infinitum ad nauseam and so Port Orange, once a great organization to become a long term stakeholder in has retrograded to a grotesque caricature of Allen Green’s southern plantation construction empire. If elected officials want to smugly imagine that this is simply a radical perspective please do another employee climate study like Mr. Kisela said you would be doing on an annualized basis and compare it to the last one you did. You will find out that whereas the last one indicated that the workforce in general felt that they were playing hand ball on the curb, now they feel as though they are buried in a sea of shit..
Name at birth: Charles Buchinsky (Buchinski)
Charles Bronson
Actor
Born: 3 November 1921
Died: 30 August 2003
Birthplace: Ehrenfield, Pennsylvania
Best known as:
Star of the 1974 action movie Death Wish
And he was married to Jill Ireland.
Yes, that Charles Kersey means business.