The Troy Police Chief, Captains and some Lieutenant(s) receive take home vehicles at the city expense. One member questioned the need for such an expenditure. The cars routinely cost in the area of $20-35000, plus maintenance, insurance, and gas. With the average lifespan of an assigned vehicle at 3 years, that equates to roughly a $10-15000 annual expenditure per administrator or $60-100,000 annually for take home cars. The member questioned why if private industry routinely utilizes a car allowance program with an average monthly rate of $500 per ...

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should be expected are:

• Brown v. Cassens is not alone. Although still rare, other workers’ compensation-related lawsuits are being allowed to proceed on the basis of RICO arguments.

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Affluent restaurant chain, Andiamo, has retained Marla Linderman to defend its cause against a group of current and former employees claiming inadequate payment of wages by the restaurant chain. The chain which has restaurants in Warren, Dearborn, Rochester and other locations is considered one of Metro Detroit's premier brands in the restaurant industry. Linderman, who is also Ofc Kocenda's employment attorney representing him in one lawsuit against Troy and will be representing him in another lawsuit against the city shortly is described as having "earned a reputation among her colleagues as an expert in civil rights law, ... << MORE >>

When you go to work are you paid to "prepare" for your work day. Well Troy Police sergeants, lieutenants and others do. They get "prep" time which equals their overtime rate of pay of 1.5 times their hourly rate for a half hour each day they work, for a total of 2 hours per week or 104 overtime hours annually per supervisor. Pretty neat eh? If you multiply that number of hours out times the number of supervisors on the payroll the amount is a mind-boggling waste. << MORE >>

In a move that can only be described as retaliatory, the employee pension board opted to cost the city hundreds of thousands of dollars out of nothing short of a vendetta. Yesterday, the employee pension board voted to deny Ofc. Kocenda's pension in what appears to be a retaliatory act for Kocenda's pending litigation against the city and broke apart the parameters for a settlement of one of Kocenda's lawsuits. Kocenda's attorney and outside attorney James Reiter had the tentative framework for the beginning of a settlement that Kocenda's counsel offered that would have saved the city ... << MORE >>

This article is a small list of the more reasonable ideas submitted by residents to assist in locating money within the budget or recommending common sense approaches to invent new revenue for the city to assist in closing the city budget shortfalls as we receive more it will be updated.

1. Aquatic Center: Open membership to the facility to all residents of Birmingham, Beverly Hills, Bloomfield Twp, Bloomfield Hills, Clawson, Royal Oak, Rochester / Rochester Hills, Oakland Township and others on a daily or seasonal membership with tiered pricing based upon type and length of membership
2. Library: open the library from 2pm- 8pm M-F and 9-5 on Sat and Sun.
3. Community Center: Open membership to the communities listed above in #1 on an annual, monthly or daily basis
4. Eliminate one assistant city manager position or eliminate the city clerk and merge the responsibilities of both positions. Another option was to reduce the assistant city manager position to one part time position as a secondary option.
5. City Attorney: contract all criminal and traffic matters to the Oakland County Prosecutor's office, retain civil with a contracted firm on an hourly basis eliminating the entire in house law department. Current rates being offered other cities are between $95 and $125 / hr which is a great rate and some of these rates are being provided by firms located in Troy and are name firms.
6. Police: eliminate the city police department and contract to Oakland County or reduce staff by one division across all employee unions, dispose of the police vehicles and equipment or use it to offset part of the first years contract costs.
7. Parks and Recreation: outsource all personnel relating to exterior and grounds maintenance, eliminate sports programs and enter into an agreement with RARA in Rochester to provide sports leagues and competitive recreational youth sports or another similar agency through a municipality the adjoins Troy.
8. Golf Course: sell or land lease one course to an outside vendor
9. Motor Pool: eliminate completely and outsource vehicle and fleet maintenance either though an onsite vendor utilizing the city garage on a lease basis or closing the city garage completely.
10. Risk Management: eliminated and outsourced 
11. Raise all city fees for permits, police reports, inspections etc. by 20-25%
12. Expand the cost recovery ordinance to encompass more routine items that utilize city resources that could be billed for against the cost of service.
13. Reopen early retirement opportunities and retirement incentives to get long time city employees to retire.

The consistent theme we are seeing is a desire by residents to move toward a united belt of the cities of Troy, Rochester Hills, Rochester, Birmingham and the Bloomfields. In reality that may be the best option or at least one option to strengthen all communities involved and to utilizes the most appreciative aspects of each community in a collective manner to develop and  enhance a central Oakland county region.

Birmingham and Rochester offer the downtown atmosphere Troy lacks with quaint small businesses and restaurants while Troy offers the likes of Somerset with premium mall centered shopping and premium chain restaurant offerings as just one example. Consistent regionalized marketing and integration of a unified belt could serve to integrate the image of a unified central Oakland upscale belt of opportunity. Troy is not a Birmingham or Rochester, but it fits a niche with Rochester Hills and Bloomfield Twp all of which are municipalities that lack certain aspects of a city or township that do not have a central stabilized downtown anchor and its the blending of resources and opportunity that could assist all municipalities on that list.

Troy city officials should start assembling focus groups to assist in identifying the areas where RESIDENTS and not council want to see cuts. The residents should decide what they can and cannot live without in this case as well.

Well residents get ready. Your city manager and members of city council are not ready to give up yet at trying to pick away at your wallet. Sources inside city hall and in key areas involving evaluation of cuts are telling us that council and Szerlag are going to try and grind you into submission.

Here is the proposed unofficial plan and after we post this all of them will deny it and try to disguise it but here is the bottom line. They don't want to conceded defeat in reality. Instead this years budget as portrayed by Mr. Lenivov and members of Troy Citizens United is not as perilous as we were led to believe by the vote "yes" camp, but the strategy is to slowly begin cutting hours and services at the library regardless of the financial situation and other "quality of life areas" in an attempt to creat frustration among residents and make them question the 'No" vote in hopes that by the time the real budget troubles start in 18 months, they can begin hitting you with ala carte millages. Oh you want the library, we will take a millage for that and the friends of the library are already on board with him on this. Eventually it will move to all the remaining items and before you know it city council will have hoped to break the spirit of the people, out spend the "No" camp in hopes of breaking it apart and in the end achieve all that it wanted and more.

Residents it is high time that residents rise up, join together and stand tall. This council and manager have no intention of following your directive. What we see now is a smoke and mirrors surface attempt with the real strategy going on behind closed doors. Recalls are inevitable now. Certain members of council must go, there is no other option. It was our hope that when this millage was defeated that council and Szerlag would see the writing on the wall but the utter defiance that existed before the vote has only intensified after the vote within the walls of city hall. What council members are targeted need to be defined sooner than later and efforts put into motion before this group can get too far moving on their attempts to undermine the vote.

Residents be active, become vigilant and contact the Oakland County Tea Party and Troy Citizens United and become a part of the solution. Troy Citizens United has a facebook page under their name, join and start taking back control of your city. It is clear that Council thinks its their city to run as THEY wish.

In his second term, Martin Howrylak needs to show breakout performance to get the confidence of the residents right now. Howrylak began to emerge during the millage issue by authoring a letter to residents indicating support of a "No" vote. Now in order to strengthen his image with residents, he should move visibly into the Beltramini camp and support her efforts to redefine the ideology and direction of council. It would be a positive step for these two council members to begin producing a united front. Beltramini who is already supported by multiple groups would most likely not ... << MORE >>

It appears that the combined efforts of the police and fire departments in wanting to purchase a command "BUS" have gone a foul. We seem to question this expenditure in these economic times. We have seen data from comparable departments and cannot ascertain how they could go 3/4 of a million dollars over budget.

The second question is need. Our last recollection is that we already have a command bus stored up at the fire station on John R north of Square Lake. Our next question is what would be a cost to ... << MORE >>

Over the last few months we have been posting all the ills of city council, but another aspect needs to be discussed. During these hard economic times and tough decisions, as a council member it would be easy to vote with the majority, "go with the crowd" and protect your political skin. It takes a true leader to break from that ideology and leave the protect bubble of the group in a move that could mean potential personal sacrifice. Only one council member in the recent past here has managed to do that, Robin Beltramini. She should be ... << MORE >>