Savings by sheriff outweigh whining of few

Historic City News received calls from readers confused by an article that appeared in The Record titled, “New plan decentralizes Sheriff’s Office — Leadership changes names, duties added”.

We have been in communication with the Sheriff’s Office over the past three or four weeks as they implement an updated management plan that includes efficiencies sufficient to bring in a new budget for the upcoming fiscal year that is $5 million lower than last year.

Historic City News has been gathering the facts and preparing our report of the sheriff’s plan which allowed him to earn high marks with the St. Johns County Board of Commissioners after he announced the significant budget cut.

The sheriff’s staff is hard at work on this transition; primarily affecting administrative accountability for the tactical operations in the law enforcement division. For all intents and purposes, this transition needs to be in place by the end of the 2011 budget year; September 30, 2011.

Everything appears to be on schedule according to Community Affairs Coordinator, Sergeant Charles E. Mulligan; however, everything is not complete nor is the story. “We intend to release a complete announcement about the goals of “intelligence led policing” and how we have adopted the new cost-saving plan,” Mulligan told Historic City News. “But, we were waiting to do it until everything was in place and running.”

In a comment posted in response to Marcia Lane’s article, poster David Wiles observed:

Today I read a front page, above the fold announcement that the Sheriff has “decentralized” operations but the text was about dividing up a retiree’s salary seven ways and initiating “integrity”.

One of the Record’s persistent and most sterling characteristics is its Corrections page and ex post facto explaining of mistakes ranging from mispelling (misspelling?) to wrong names to whole stories to be retracted.

But the real question for today is what does the word editor mean? Or is the stock answer always “It’s a work in progress. The dust hasn’t settled. We can’t put it all into effect at once”?

After hearing Mulligan’s explanation, it is clearer what occurred in this instance.

It has been my experience that when you are dealing with a group of cops or firemen, you must contend with a bunch of strong, alpha personality types who will start whining when they don’t get what they think they deserve.

One or more individuals from within the agency obviously thought that they were being overlooked for a better paying position or were jealous that someone else was given the chance to earn more money and they weren’t. Hard to believe, isn’t it.

So, rather than come forward and address their concerns with the sheriff who made the decision, they felt powerless to change the outcome and made a misguided decision to take a half-baked story, laced with a self-interested agenda, to the paper. Ahh, powerless no more.

The result, you ask? The Record sends a reporter to spend two hours interviewing a staff member who really cannot add to a memorandum authored by Sheriff Shoar in response to rumored dissatisfaction within the ranks by a small few of the 500+ employees who work for the agency.

After all of that, you get the article you got, and really don’t know any more than you did before you read it; that was newsworthy — but a whiner, who is paid by our tax dollars, and is lucky to have a job at all in this economy, gets placated.

Suffice to say, Historic City News is preparing an accurate, informative news article for those who are interested in what the Sheriff is doing to reduce his budget. It will be concise and focus on the changes to the law enforcement division.

The management changes redirect responsibility and accountability within the appointed executive staff including four newly designated District Commanders, two newly designated Regional Chiefs, the Director of Law Enforcement and the Undersheriff.

As Mulligan said, “this is a fluid process” and will be fine-tuned as they approach total implementation. We need to allow the Sheriff’s Office to actually make the changes before we begin publishing the complaints of a few self-interested detractors.

Michael Gold, Editor
HISTORIC CITY NEWS