Well, our city fathers have finally realized what taxpayers haveknown for years: There is a lack of proper management of the cityworkforce — resulting in poor use of taxpayers’ dollars and, insome cases, less than adequate city services.

Mayor Bill Godbold himself admitted the problem in aspecially-called meeting last week with department heads andaldermen. “We’re losing control over our employees,” the mayorbellowed to aldermen and department heads as they discussed newproposed city personnel policies.

One does not have to look much further than city work crews thatpick up leaves, tree limbs and other debris along residentialneighborhoods to know a problem exists. Often a crew of three canbe seen watching a fourth city employee operate a large front-endloader to pick up piles of leaves. Why the city would use a$100,000-plus piece of equipment designed for handling items muchheavier than leaves is one question, but why it takes three cityemployees to watch is the source of many a joke about cityhall.

Here’s another example: A city garbage truck was observedbacking around several parked cars to get to two trash cans.Instead of simply walking the 20-or-so feet to the cans, pickingthem up and dumping the contents, a crew member stood in the streetto direct the truck’s progress. So much for quick and easy. (No,the cans were not too heavy to pick up and carry.)

Our favorite, however, was observed just last week. Along thehallway on the city’s side of the Government Complex, an employeecould be seen through a window in the mayor’s office diligentlyworking on her computer. The project she was working on couldclearly be seen on the computer screen — Solitaire takes a lot ofconcentration!

These incidents aside, the situation is truly serious when themayor admits, as he did in Wednesday’s meeting, that some cityemployees have been seen during working hours buying beer at localstores. One has to presume that if employees are buying on citytime, they are probably also consuming on city time.

At a time when the city is cutting essential services, such ascommercial garbage pickup, and facing such an extremely tightbudget that it cannot afford to supply a new industry with the mostbasic of city services — a water line for a fire hydrant — it isgood to see they are starting to crack down on the most importantarea of every business — personnel.

The city has a lot of dedicated, hard-working employees, buttheir morale is quickly damaged when they see others getting awaywith things they should not. We don’t know what took so long, butwe are glad to see the mayor and board finally taking someaction.