Dear Editor,
On the recent health insurance topic at the city council meeting, I want everyone to know that I did see to it that a third bid was received on health insurance from Freedom Claims Management for city employees.
Freedom Claims said they had approached the city about bidding on health insurance, but they were ignored. 
The reason I was not at the meeting is because I woke up sick Monday morning and was very sick all day.
I really did want to be there and nothing else would have kept me from attending.
As for the city staff saying they were under the gun, I guess two years just isn’t enough time to figure out that one can’t wait until the last minute to start taking bids and I still don’t understand why they could not get more bids.
As I said before, we raised the mill levy to attract and retain employees, which raised your taxes and now they are worried about your tax dollar when it comes to providing decent employee insurance?
The city did not need to hire more professional help to do the city staff’s job.
Perhaps we need to hire professionals to actually work for the city.
We could have set up a committee to study the proposals, since the staff apparently can’t manage it.
Apparently, the police chief fired a sergeant around eight or nine months ago, on testimony that was not factual and the city had to hire an outside attorney to handle the city’s case when the sergeant appealed his firing.
Once again, we always seem to have to hire professionals such as this and engineering, when we pay people to do those jobs. The sergeant got his job back and received half of his back pay and his sergeant wage while starting back in patrol.
This should never have happened, because he should not have been fired and it just shows the major problems facing this city and problems that keep costing the taxpayers because the city staff needs to go back to yearly appraisals and appointments. 
I was wrong about the price of the mayor’s tree because the original cost figure stated that half was $10,222, but the second warrant register showed the final payment as 13,333, so the total was actually $23, 555.
For a tree that isn’t even lit up at night.
As always, my door is always open — 620-786-1351.
Councilman Randy Myers
Great Bend