Should anyone be surprised that the police union gave so little support to even contributing a dime to their own health care expenses? Do these people realize what city they're living in, and the fact that we're one step away from becoming a distressed city? It looks like the city of Erie taxpayer will continue to pay the FULL COST of $10,600 a year for health care for each police officer.

Jim Schwartz, the bozo head of the police union, was interviewed on television last night, and you could tell that there was some real displeasure shown by officers at the police union meeting. Schwartz was the same guy who just a couple of months ago was arguing for a 3.25 percent pay increase for police in their next contract since this is what the fireman got.

Again, neither Schwartz nor the police, nor the fireman get it. In a perfect world they should ALL get their health care paid, annual pay increases, etc. But do these folks know what city they are living in, and what year this is?

We simply can't afford to continue to throw out lavish pay increases and full health care coverage to these people while the rest of Erie gets flushed down the toilet. We don't have the money anymore!

Watching Joe Walko of the Fire union, and Jim Schwartz of the FOP makes me think that these guys would watch Erie go bankrupt as long as their people continued to get as much salary and benefits as they could. It's pathetic.

Not only should garbage be outsourced, but why do we also have city employees mowing the lawn in public parks and schools? Many of these people you see out pushing a lawn mower and working for the parks department are making over 30K and colleting taxpayer-funded health care, retirement benefits, paid sick days, etc, for mowing the lawn!

This has to end. Don't we have enough landscaping companies in Erie where we could outsource the lawn care work for public parks and schools? Some snowplowing work (some, not most), could be outsourced too, but the city (and Pete Petriani) would never admit it.

I also found it disgusting to watch City Council spending so much time listening to the golf course people argue that we need all these
full-time employees working all year round at the gulf courses (even in winter).

We shouldn't even be debating how many employees we need at Golf courses in Jan and Feb. Instead, we should be getting ready to close down two courses and sell the property. No city that is about to be distressed has any business owning three golf courses.

What the YMCA did not say in the Times article (but what many of its members know), is that the YMCA was simply never capable of running the Family First Sports Park.

The YMCA's in Erie have a hard enough time running the facilities they have now. When a shower breaks, when a drinking foutain breaks, or a piece of equipment runs down, it stays broken or in disrepair for months at the Y's. Half of the shower heads at the Glenwood Y haven't even worked right for over a year.

Not to mention the fact that large areas of the downtown Y aren't even heated in the winter time, and at both the Glenwood and Downtown Y it's very common to find garbage and crap all over the floors and left there for an extended period of time.

Or look at the different times that the Y's "check-o-matic" banking system has malfunctioned, which caused the Y's computer system to debit the checking accounts of members TWICE in one month for membership fees. This of course caused some members to incur banking charges (overdrafts), which caused the Y to have to reimburse them.

With the staff and management of the YMCA failing at so many basic tasks, there was no way they could have taken over and run family first.

Any peson who holds a seat on the City Council should be forced to take 9 credits in Economics and Accounting. (note: credits from 1970 don't apply)

Actually, anyone on City Council should have to take my 12th grade Economics and Government course, or just be forced to learn from my old senior Econ/Gov teacher at Strong Vincent, Jim McGraw. That man is a genius, and would show these people a thing or two about how the hell you run a budget. I think we have to face the fact that our city is going into the shitter because a few people and organizations aren't ready to look at the gravity of the situation and start paying for the ticket on gravy train they've been riding on.

As far as the YMCA, I remember the reason I cancelled my membership; For the entire year I had the membership, since I started it at the Downtown Y, the Glenwood Y would never have my membership information. Apparently there's no way for their computers to communicate with each other about 34 blocks away. I'd have to keep filling out this stupid card to request them to grab my information, and they'd never have it.

There's plenty of blame to throw around over the budget mess. Do I think the unions should agree to pay a portion of their health care costs? Yes, and I'm a union member. It doesn't make me happy to say that, but sometimes we have to make concessions. The writing is on the wall. Either everyone pitches in to keep Erie from becoming state-run, or we'll all pay the consequences...especially the union people.