It happens in Washington DC, it happens in Columbus and now it happens in Celina (again). You would think that Celina City Officials could figure it out, but they never seem to. You can’t hide anything in Celina, everybody knows everything about every one. My thoughts are…do they think we are all dumb and don’t care or do they think, don’t worry about it we know what we are doing and we will take care of it.

Celina's new grant coordinator Jerry Lacy had been working for the city since Jan. 28, even though city council didn't approve his hiring until May 11^th and he had yet to be paid his first check. Why wasn’t he getting paid if he was working the hours? Having retired from the City of Celina almost 6 years ago after working there for 30 years, I know City employees would be aware of somebody new working in the office. This also means that the Mayor and Safety Service Director would be aware he was working there…and with as many meetings as Celina City Council has at the Utilities Office on Market Street I’m pretty sure they noticed. I also know that the talk around town was happening. So why did the City Council after the Third (not the first or second) but on the final reading decide to hire Jerry Lacy as grant coordinator for the city's downtown revitalization project and never received a straight answer on why the delay?

According to an article in the Celina Daily Standard from May 12, Mayor LaRue said she didn’t know and Community Development Director Kent Bryan and Safety Service Director Jeff Hazel would not answer why it took so long to make the hiring official. Hmmmm, the Mayor didn’t know and Bryan and Hazel wouldn’t answer the question. “You got some splainin to do Lucy!”

So why did it take well over 4 months to make it official? Why wait? Why didn’t somebody say “Hey, did we approve this job yet?” Why in the world did it even pass in the 3^rd reading until questions were answered. The last I remember the Mayor, the Council, Bryan and Hazel work for the citizens of Celina not the other way around. Hey, if you messed up, tell us you did and put steps forward to fix it and not do it again in the future.

So what else are they not telling us? Do the Mayor and her City Administration ever talk about issues? Will something happen like this again in the future? Yep, because this isn’t the first time something like this has happened at the City of Celina and it won’t be the last time.

Some advice for our City Officials, do it right, nothing else is acceptable.

Who is to blame for this mess? Everybody who approved it and didn’t get the answers first. As for transparency it got a little darker again after this mess.