About todays Daily Local News article and Joe Carroll

Former District Attorney Joseph Carroll wants to lead Coatesville

By ERIC S. SMITH

This has got to be one of the most understated news articles in the history of man.

I believe our city council is dysfunctional again mostly because of a cronyism politics council president. I think Ed Simpson has a man for police chief in mind and it's not Dominick Bellizzie.

We again have what I believe is an incompetent city manager. He was OK as an assistant city manager. Making Harmony St. into a parking lot was a bad plan when it was presented 4 years ago and it has nothing to do with Lincoln University now. Our “parking problem” is really a fear people have of walking more than a few feet from their car. There are more than 100 metered parking spaces on Lincoln Highway that are never used because shoppers have a reasonable fear of walking more than a block from their car. Store and restaurant owners don't want armed robberies reported in the news and muggings of older people are not reported but people know about them.

We could use a city manager with knowledge of criminal law. One of the persons who handled cash when $168,000 in cash went missing in 2008 is still working at city hall; one left for Reading and the other scooted off to India.The finance manager that discovered the missing cash was dismissed by former City Manager Rawlings and the forensic auditor that Joe Carroll brought who independently discovered the missing $168,000 was dismissed by council members when he discovered that some city council members did not pay trash taxes.

The dismissed police officers mentioned in the article may go to prison over various forms of contempt of court.  Some Coatesville officials may also be in trouble with the courts.

Because of reduced police presence in Coatesville drug dealers have an opportunity to make more money, violence has increased and as we have seen arson is starting up again. 

It’s almost like 2008 all over again. But at least now we have a fire department that will report arson fires as arson fires.

Maybe the article is OK and it's just that I know about things in great detail. But the devil is absolutely in those details.