Rumford's Police Chief Doesn't Seem to Have Been Following the Town News

At the last Selectpersons’ Meeting, (really cannot get used to that “politically correct” name, but maybe we can write-in Candice Casey even though she has said she’s not running because even though she can’t do what she wanted to do she would save us money and we would have a woman on the board and it wouldn’t be all selectmen make selectpersons make some sense I guess even if it sounds weird) Police Chief Stacy Charter came in with a request to apply for a COPS grant. According to the WVAC recording and the reports in the paper this would lock the town into adding another man upping the department to 12 sworn officers for 4 years. We don’t need all of the 11 we have with the shrunken population and loss of business. The some of the Selectpersons talked about things “might” change, how long have we been hearing that? When it changes we will worry about it. Right now we have to worry about that we don’t have it and can’t pay for all those cops Charter admitted are being paid at least $65,000 the base pay. The grant only pays the base salary and benefits for 3 years. We have to pay for the 4th year and the training every time one quits. Last year something like five quit and we sent new ones off to be trained. That is even more than what River Valley Sun thought at $58,000 average.

Charter seems to have missed the articles on the town auditor and how we don’t have a good audit for years. He seems to have missed that Casey said she won’t be filing her papers cause she won’t be able to write grants for the town cause you got to have good audits to qualify for grants. Casey may not be able to write grants and she may not be aable to do those other things she wanted to do but she has been right on top of things including this audit thing way better then those that have been on the board we need her there still and if she doesn’t put her name on the ballot we can still write her in. She knows what is going on.

The Chief needs to forget the COPS grant we don’t need more COPS and we shouldn’t qualify on account of having no real audit for years who knows where our money has been going.