Editor:

Do you want to feel like a kid again? Then attend a Franklin City Council meeting and ask a question of the council members and this is where you will be told that we don’t answer questions. You may have five minutes to speak and then sit down. Didn’t the citizens of Franklin elect the council to act on your behalf and to answer any questions you may have about what they enact on your behalf?

It seems to me that somewhere along the line the council has forgotten that they answer to the people of their district. What we have now is a group of elected officials that do what they want to do and you better not ask any questions of them because they can’t bother with your concerns. I see this as a form of government that you find in Russia and other counties that do not have a democratic form of doing things.

Leaving a state that if the government wanted to raise taxes it had to be voted on by the people of the state and cities to be passed, here you don’t get to vote on the tax base. It is passed without your permission even if you don’t want a new tax every time the city or state wants to enact. Democracy be damned we are going to pass it anyway, so live with it.

I myself have a problem with the way the council enacted two penalties on one electric bill. A 1.5 percent penalty and a $15 penalty on one bill if you don’t pay by the 20th of the month. I get paid on the 4th Wednesday of the month and there is no way for myself, and I am sure many others in Franklin and other places that get electricity from the city. I went to the city manager to find out what could be done. We had a nice chat about the problem, but he couldn’t do anything because it is policy. So two weeks later I met with the city’s lawyer, but he claimed he had to do what the council had enacted. What good is he to the general public? So finally I went to a city council meeting where I was not going to get any satisfaction because they don’t answer questions. I was told that someone would get in touch with me. Well during that week I received a flyer with the city’s policy on late charges marked through with a yellow highlight pen, so much for someone will get in touch. Was this a new form of communications from thje people that run your city? Democracy in action, what a laugh. I have decided to fight them in the press, and if I can find a lawyer willing to work pro bono, I am going to sue them for discrimination because there is no way for me to pay my bill on time because of the way Social Security pays me. Oh by the way, has anyone out there ever had the clerks at the pay window tell you that you were a month behind? I found out in May that I had been paying late for three and a half years unknown to me. I always looked at the amount owed and not the whole bill, so I never knew that I was behind. No one at the window ever told me I was behind. So I paid one and a half percent for three and a half years. This added up.

It’s time for some action!

 

Leon Sparrow

Franklin