Tuesday, February 15, 2005

Q: Are You Unemployed?

With all the talk and rhetoric and spin surrounding Sam Roop's departure from the Tulsa City Council this week, I thought this question needed to be addressed. There has been a great deal of commentary on the radio and the public forums that Sam took the Mayor's offer of a high paying job because he's been unemployed for over a year.

If that is true about Sam, then it must be true about me, too. Right?

Wrong. Let me make this very clear. I am not unemployed. I have a full-time job. It is called being the Tulsa City Councilor for District 2. The job pays a whopping $18,000 per year (if you don't count the 4.7% voluntary reduction in pay that all councilors took in sympathy with the city's workers, who had to take a similar reduction in pay when this city hit the financial skids).

I put in between thirty to sixty hours a week in my full-time job. Now that recall has raised its selfish head, I'm still putting in similar hours, but much of it is now spent playing defense, rather than working directly for my district.

You might say I'm nuts for putting up with so much grief for so little financial reward. I'll leave that argument to Dr. Phil or someone else equally qualified (yes...I know...I know).

The one thing I'll never stand for is for someone to say I'm unemployed.

I love my job and the people I work for!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

The echoes in the buildings where the town hall meeting were held has died down. No longer is heard the “Amend the Charter and do away with the five little kingdoms”. “Amend the charter and get local representation in nine districts”. “Amend the charter to where the citizen can demand how their tax money is spent”. Amend the charter where your representatives can control the budget”. “Amend the charter where your representative can demand an audit of the departments’ expenses”.

This sounds like a fairy tale today.

After 15 years as soon as a ex-councilors gets off his knees from telling the mayor “Yes Sir, I’ll not be a yes man” we are reincarnating the five little kingdoms. One cannot blame him after being out of work for a year, a $90,000 job would seem like a gift from heaven. It would seem the mayor is establishing another layer of bureaucracy that is not authorized in the charter unless it is behind the smoke screen of one of his 16 good old boy appointments outside civil service. There is always the nasty word called “political bribery”.

The award for the letter of the week in the World should be given to the one from the ex-councilor commenting on selling water to the towns that surround Tulsa. He is all for it as he has fled Tulsa for the greener pastures of a suburban town who wants the cheep water.

Anonymous said...

Clearly, Sam Roop has "sold his soul".....and has lost any integrity he might have had! Many of us have been witness to his verbal committments about correcting the "good-ole-boy system"...and now, he is part of it! SHAME ON YOU, SAM!!

Chris, we support you 100 % and appreciate all that you are doing!

IF THE LORD BE FOR YOU, WHO CAN BE AGAINST YOU?!

Anonymous said...

I just read on the KTUL website that now Sam Roop says, "No I will not run for Mayor". Didn't take Good Old Bill long to whip Old Sam into shape did it?

Anonymous said...

I've often wondered just what in the heck you did for a living (not that $18,000 a year is a living) before you were elected to the city council. Where did you work? What did you do?

Some of your critics have said that you have poor people skills. In your previous jobs, were you ever accused of not getting along with others?