Sunday, March 23, 2008

Rapid Fire: Sunday News

A front page story on how slow the USPS is.

Really?

Must be a damed slow news week.

What burns my ass is what all started this "front page story".

Let's see if I can keep this straight.

Packets for Aldermen that are mailed out Friday afternoon fail to reach them by Monday nights city council meeting.

Let's just say for this story that the USPS does deliver the packets Monday on time. Most mail delivers in the afternoon. Barring any non-working aldermen, most would read their mail sometime after coming home at 5 pm. This gives them a maximum time of 2 1/2 hours to read the packets before the 7:30 council meeting. The taxpayers pay a minimum of $.41 for each packet mailed for this service and reliability is about nil.

First question that comes to my mind is that is it worth $.41 cents each to mail out packets that aldermen will receive a whopping 150 minutes before a meeting? Unless some railroading tactics are used by the aldermen to give a short notice to pass something quickly, couldn't they just be handed out before the meeting?

So let's see, the next brainstorm the city officials can come up with is to hand deliver the packets to the 14 alderman.

Late breaking news from the YOU-GOT-TO-BE-SHITTING-ME newswire:

We pay a city employee $12.oo a hour to drive around Quincy in a city wheels using $3.00+ a gallon gas to hand deliver 14 alderman packets ?

I know, I'm using a lot of assumptions here.

1. The city employee only makes $12.00 an hour.
2. Only 1 employee is used to deliver these packets.
3. The packets are delivered Friday afternoon vs. Monday afternoon.

The think tank of Quincy Fire which consists of myself, two dogs, a 30 pack of beer, beef jerky and the remote has a better suggestion:

E-MAIL THEM.

Cost: $0.00
Delivery: Instant
Reliability: High


60 comments:

Quincy Fire said...

P.S.

Happy Easter !

jlb said...

Happy Easter to you, Fire!

Anonymous said...

$12 an hour? C'mon, you know it's much higher than that.

You think Firegate is going to make City Hall more e-mail friendly? Please.

Remember, this is the same crowd that said downtown Wi-Fi should not be a top priority.

Look at the City Council. I'm betting there's a good percentage of those mopes who don't even know how to use e-mail.

UMRBlog said...

A rising tide lifts all boats but is Hell for the guy with no boat, treading water.

Good idea. Not enough personal infrastructure.

Anonymous said...

Why don't they just stop by city hall and pick up their own packets? They get paid to be an alderman with benefits. Secondly, receiving the packet on Monday gives very little time to review the material and make an educated decision. Hmmmmm, maybe some of the past stupid decisions can be blamed on the post office. We could be on to something......

Maybe the cops could deliver the packets during the weekend on their way to the donut shop or their favorite radar trap location.

Email????? that's just too simple!!!

Anonymous said...

What is the job title of the delivery guy? Also, there is no one who works at city hall that makes as little as $12/hr.

Anonymous said...

Put them on all the empty buses that drive around town all day sucking down tax dollars. The city's legal team could ride around and distribute them.

Anonymous said...

I'm sure when the Whig decided they would take on the Post Office and it's poor service, they had no clue that the real story here is more about City Hall inefficiency than it is USPS inefficiency.

They just thought they were doing a tough, hard-hitting story on the Post Office. Lord knows they won't do one on City Hall.

Anonymous said...

Maybe someone at city hall has a spouse or close relative who will be getting laid off from the school system again. They can hire them as a City Council Information Packet Manager for ph, say around $28k/yr.

Anonymous said...

You can bet your sweet ass that job won't be posted for anyone outside City Hall to know about.

bg said...

Is the Animal Control guy on call 24-7? His, I mean, the City's truck was parked at a house on the northeast corner of town Sunday afternoon, with a couple other cars blocking it in the driveway.

I'd hate to see another city employee driving a city vehicle on a day off so they could go to a friends house and watch the Nascar race....

Anonymous said...

There was no NASCAR race on Sunday. They don't race on Easter or Mother's Day.

Not defending city workers...just saying there was no race.

Anonymous said...

Company car + Company gas.

Part of the union contract?

or abuse of the taxpayers dollars?

bg said...

It just goes to show how much I watch Nascar.

Anonymous said...

They were likely watching a replay of the Malaysian Grand Prix, Kimi won.

Tookie, your BMW Sauber is looking good this year, w/ some podium time.

Anonymous said...

Then you get the standard:

"People here are outstanding. The problem is when it gets shipped off someplace else."

Oh, yeah, everyone else is fucked up.
It's the retarded mail sorters in St Louis. Not the outside the box thinking mayor who makes sure we hand deliver these things.

Anonymous said...

anonymous 7:11 was right - i bet about half these guys don't have email. WHY NOT??? If they don't have email, I can be pretty sure that they have NO IDEA about leadership in TODAY'S WORLD. No wonder we can't attract any 21st century jobs - we're still farting around in the mid 20th Century. Email (or at the very least, fax) communications would be a vast improvement, but it would mean that our alderman would be MORE ACCESSIBLE - something I doubt they want. Who has time to chase them around by phone or to type out a letter and send it in the post (which might not get there anyway). COME ON CITY OF QUINCY - GET YOUR ACT TOGETHER AND GET THESE DOPES SHOVELED ON TO THE INFORMATION SUPERHIGHWAY!!!

Anonymous said...

Jim Mentesti says these presumptions are all false.

Anonymous said...

Besides sensitive documents, this is really not a bad idea.

The city allready has thier own servers. It wouldn't be very hard for them to use postini and set up webmail accounts for the alderman on thier server.

I can foresee two problems though.

The older Alderman who did not grow up in the computer age may have problems with the technology.

Alderman may not want to use the system due to the fact that "Big brother" can always look in on thier emails.

;)

Anonymous said...

If they can't use email, they should find a different means to free health care.

Anonymous said...

They sure have figured out how to use their cell phones.

Anonymous said...

Call them on their city-paid cell phones to swing by City Hall and pick up their own damn packet.

Of course, then they would charge the city mileage and get reimbursed that way.

Shameless.

Anonymous said...

Geez, when it rains it pours. Little bit of bad pub for the center for ind living these days. My question, why is a gal w/ two felony convictions (recent) placed in control over a vulnerable persons money and life?

Who's in charge there?

Just wondering

Anonymous said...

When I went on a ride along with the QPD, they distributed the packets to aldermen.

Anonymous said...

Is there a sign up sheet for ride alongs?

Anonymous said...

That's got to be better than Viagra watching the QPD run up to your door and hand deliver mail from the city every week.

Must make you feel pretty important.

Unless it's a warrant.

Anonymous said...

$40,000 starting salary for our police officers to deliver packets to aldermen. That also makes a helluva lot of sense.

Is there any common sense at City Hall?

bg said...

If the Rams decide to return to Macomb, will Mentesti take the credit?

Inquiring minds want to know.

Anonymous said...

Yes he will. Just as he brought in Pella for the good of the region as defined in the World Famous Tri State Summit.

Anonymous said...

Here's the other part of the hand-delivered City Council packets fiasco you probably weren't aware of...once they decided that the USPO wasn't up to the job, Olson said, “We've finally found a job for the cemetery keeper’s wife; she can drive around and drop off the mail.” Of course, this also meant that all departments had to get their shit together before lunch on Fridays so she could spend the rest of the afternoon touring the city with the mail. Now it might not seem like much, but either the work of the city gets done before noon on Friday or you might as well not try too hard because if you don’t meet the deadline, you have the whole next week to get the research, recommendation, resolution, ordinance, FYI stuff or whatever it is together. (Not that recommendations or research mean much to those Aldermen dopes anyway—they seem to make decisions based on tea leaves and palm lines for chrisakes).

Anonymous said...

QND is better than QHS, just wanted everyone to be aware of that.

Yes, yes, they always said at QND, "If you can't cut it here, you have go to the school on the hill".

Anonymous said...

And the ones who are/were fortunate enough to get to go to "the school on the hill" are/were the lucky ones.

Anonymous said...

1:59

They pretty much had to take anybody.

Anonymous said...

You weren't so fortunate because ND obviously didn't teach you a damn thing.

Anonymous said...

6:53

Why does 172 hire a QND guy to run the whole freaking thing? Because they want it run right, finally, and it will take a QND product to do that. Dumbass.

Also, jerk, nice job bashing the Catholic schools recently for consolidating, might want to take that one back! That one came back to bite ya in the ass, didn't it! LOL

Anonymous said...

Lemon will nothing but a cheerleader, paycheck collecting third stringer.

Did you see his interview with the Whig? It was embarrassing for him.

The pool of "qualified" candidates is shallow.

Anonymous said...

I don't believe I was the one bashing the catlick school consolidation. I am liking it as I am hoping the catlick population in this town decreases.
Lemon really isn't a Notre Dame guy, I think he is originally from Pittsfield.
Spring is a Notre Dame guy and he sucks as a mayor. What's your answer to that? Why do you QND people always think you are so much better than everyone else? Is it because this is a catlick town ran by catlicks for catlicks?

Anonymous said...

these comments are all hilarious, ...except for 11:09
Don't hate the buses dude. Believe me, it's a worthy service and there are more riders than you think. There would be Many more cars clogging the roads without it. yeah occasionally it's empty but not often

Anonymous said...

I'm not saying it's not a worthy service. Just get some smaller fucking buses. They are mostly, not occasionally, empty or nowhere near even 1/4 capacity. And all the praise our retarded mayor gets for "giving" seniors free rides. Bid assed joke. He should ride the fucking buses, there's plenty of space for his gigantic head.

Anonymous said...

Yes, QND will always be better than QHS. We don't think that, we know that. Always have. We sent those that couldn't make it at ND to QHS.

Anonymous said...

At least we paid our own way at ND, other schools were like welfare education.

Anonymous said...

Hey lets go break into our school, destroy trophy cases full of mediocre Class A Regional trophies from when we beat the Home School and School for the Blind programs to advance, break the newest Commodore 64's, and oh my favorite, take a dump on the teachers desk. The religion and structure classes paid off for those ND students. Let’s not for get the damage they did to the almighty football facility. When you going to play QHS in football? SCARED!!!

Anonymous said...

And the Great White Porn Moustached Mayor couldn't even fund raise properly. Every year he sent all his little turds out to beg for money and every year tuition went up.

He's an idiot, everyone is quickly learning that.

Anonymous said...

QRND is far from being better than QHS. Look at the cirriculum variety and rethink your statement. I am certain QrND students still go to Vo-Tech classes at QHS. ND kids are waising an hour each day on religion classes that help them to be the hypocrits that you are.
When is the last time QrND beat QHS in quizbowl. Never! Oh, by the way, since you likely don't know, quizbowl is a challenge that tests the students knowledge of a variety of subjects. Why doesn't QrND ever win this??? I think the mercury in alll that fish you've been eating is making you more stupid all the time.

"At least we paid our own way at ND, other schools were like welfare education"
What a piss-poor investment you made! Wait, a piss-poor investment your mommy and daddy made for thier spoiled little piece of shit!

Anonymous said...

QND play football against QHS? QND always refused to play Carthage because they would have gotten it handed to them.

Anonymous said...

This is bullshit

Anonymous said...

5:03

We always beat QHS when we played em in the 80's.

Anonymous said...

5:03

Those guys paid for that, too.

At least QHS felons pay their fines and move on. QHS felons leech off the system for years. Public school scum.

Anonymous said...

5:03

Those guys paid for that, too.

At least QHS felons pay their fines and move on. QHS felons leech off the system for years. Public school scum.

Anonymous said...

Tell QHS to keep their players out of jail, and we will play them. Nice track record of offenses, there. Why do you think the program sucks so bad. Seen the playoffs lately, Blue Devils? Hell no you haven't, you suck, and you know it.

Anonymous said...

We are a community. We need to support all Quincy High and QND programs. Support the home school-ers too.

Anonymous said...

QND felons just end up working as city of Quincy employees.

Anonymous said...

Or they become the Dem Party Chairman

Anonymous said...

2:52

true, regretably.

Anonymous said...

Scru yew gies, I'm HomE-schewleded.

Anonymous said...

But what about the QND kid on the basketball team that got arrested last fall? Didn't make the news.. did it?

Anonymous said...

You all need to work on your grammer.

Anonymous said...

You all must not have graduatedhigh school too long ago to be still stuck on that topic. When you get a bit olderyou will look on your high school years and either laugh, or be glad you have moved on.

Anonymous said...

Don't knock the USPS, since the mail on weekends is shipped to St.Louis for sorting, then why don't we mail the packets on Thur or Monday, then they would get the next day....duh.

Anonymous said...

qhs football 2-0

 
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