Council’s Decision Vetoed

On Thursday night, a council meeting was held, in which city council voted to abolish four of the different administrative jobs in Wilmington City. However, the mayor chose to throw out this decision in the form of a veto. In order to override the veto from the mayor, there will need to be approximately five city council members who would need to gather together to oppose the veto. The original proposal was set up to eliminate the Human Resources director position, streets superintendent position, and two other positions that are currently vacant at this point. Those two positions were police chief and engineer enforcement.

There were several reasons, according to the mayor, that he objected the original legislative proposal. One of the primary reasons he objected is because he believes that taking away the positions would take away the protection of the city, meaning that the city could end up being sued for discrimination based on age. The mayor also made it clear that one councilman for the city, Rob Jaehnig, provided a projection on the money that would be saved by eliminating positions and that there simply was not much money being saved after all. Some city council members believe that by eliminating the director of human resources position, they could hand that function over to the county government.

The mayor has made it clear that these positions are quite necessary. In fact, he has spoken about the problems and concerns that citizens have with the area in which they live, including traffic lights that are broken, disturbing pot holes, weeds in the area and other things like that, all of which are handled by the Maintenance and Repair Department, as well as the Streets Department. Mayor Riley says that he will not allow such a position to be eliminated, especially since plenty of good has come out of this position, helping to improve the city.

The President of City Council, Scott Kirchner, has said, “Council has yet to see a single identification of where a dollar savings has come from, an indication of whether it is a one-time savings or structural changes that are permanent and can be counted on in the future.” He also said, “And we have zero dollars reversed appropriated from the budget. Until those things occur, that is just a checking account balance that can be spent.” Kirchner also believes that if the mayor has any ideas of his own, he can bring them up at a council meeting and see what the councilmembers think about it.