Dear Scriba Taxpayers;

I recently saw that Brad Coe had a letter in another forum, and had the opportunity to read his campaign website as well and was rather disturbed to find that a lot of the information he offers has the best spin put on them that there could be. Do I expect the people employed by my town to be honest and forthright? You bet I do! It is very difficult for me to trust someone to handle millions of our dollars if they aren’t honest and forthright. First, he claims there are personal attacks on him. I have yet to see anything personal said about HIM. I have however, seen attacks on HIS DECISIONS AND PRACTICES. If any namecalling and slurs have been done, they have come from him regarding the highway workers and others who are finally blowing the whistle on him. There are several of his claims/points I’d like to make based on foiled information as well as my own personal research, on best practices in highway departments.

A. He recently purchased ANOTHER brand new truck because the one Mr. Mulcahey (one of only two men in the department who supports Mr. Coe) was supposedly dying. Why then, as of at least one after its delivery is Mulcahey still driving the old truck?

B. Mr. Coe claims to have all kinds of experience in running a highway department, as well as lots of certifications for this and that. 1st, most of those certifications I myself could get just by sitting there for a day or two like he did. 2nd, the majority of them were gained at taxpayer expense, and on town time (during his work hours) 3rd, how many days does Mr. Coe actually supervise his employees if he’s off to conventions, seminars, etc. all the time? Incidentally, how can he claim increased supervision? Has he delegated that to the deputy? If so, exactly what is Mr. Coe’s job?

C. Sealing cracks in roads is not considered best practices for preserving road integrity, it just puts off the inevitable. It looks nice, and is a temporary fix, but in the long run water still gets in under the seal and undermines the surface under the asphalt. When that happens, the repairs when the road is repaved require much more work and prep to put the new paving in correctly. In this case, if Mr. Coe is re-elected, it will be after he retires when we all have to pony up for miles and miles of repaving roads all at one time, rather than a little at a time. His claim is that budgets have been cut and that’s why he is not paving….I really wonder where all the CHIPS money has gone? For new trucks and one used one that required thousands of dollars in repairs?

D. Claiming the highway department was behind the times is not a good enough excuse for all his spending. Not only is it a HUGE insult to the men who have served us in good faith as superintendent in the past, it’s an insult to us…as if throwing money and technology at things is actually saving us money? It might be, but at what future expense, and why are our roads in worse shape today than in the past?

E. Mr. Coe’s supposed “Better scheduling of current employees” sounds like he has done wonders in that department. It’s not like he took a job with a high turnover rate and diminished the turnover. The same guys who have worked there through the last two superintendents are still there. You do not need new employees when you have 9 seasoned veterans to do the work. We in fact now have more men “on-call”/per diem than we have ever had.

F. Brad Coe had no more DIRECT experience than Roger Myers did when he was elected to run our highway department. And he hasn’t worked out real well in my opinion. In fact, despite all of Brad Coe’s experiential claims, Roger has more years of experience supervising employees as well as experience running the equipment his men will have to run, and I bet HE wouldn’t spend thousands of dollars on a used truck only to find it would require thousands of dollars to keep it running. Why? Because if you haven’t ran a piece of equipment, how could you possibly know what to look for when buying one?

G. As for integrity and leadership? When you leave out necessary paperwork requested for an audit of your books, that may or may not be considered fraud. On the other hand, it does put your integrity into question. Regardless of his feeling of being vindicated, he has not been. HE himself screwed up the paperwork whether it was intentional or not. A leader is someone who LEADS, not drags people around according to his own interests and needs…and works with his people, not isolates themselves. Is he really a leader? I’m thinking he’s not.

As I have stated before, the information is all there for you folks, all you need to do is look at it. Call up a Myers supporter or Myers himself and ask to see it. Personally for me, this is all about getting people into office who do a great job. If they aren’t, they need to go and we can give someone else a try….that’s what you do when your employee isn’t working out.

Kelly Rhinehart-Harris