Iread an article recently with the headline, “$10,000 Salary of Howell School Treasurer Questioned,” regarding the issue of the salary to be paid to have a “second set of eyes” look over the Howell K-8 School District’s finances.
Newly elected Howell Board of Education member Jeanette Smith raised the issue and, unfortunately, took some heat from the public for it.
Well, I would like to thank Mrs. Smith for raising the issue for the first time, in my experience anyway.
What most people do not understand is that it is easy to spot “big ticket items” on the agenda, like approval of $150,000-plus salaries for assistant superintendents that essentially jump off the page to even the casual observer of board business.
Only someone who does her homework and who pours over every line item of the budget, every item of each agenda, and every piece of backup documentation to the agenda is going to notice the minutia of a $10,000 budget item.
Anyone who criticizes Mrs. Smith in this regard, in my opinion, has missed the point. She is sweating all the details, the obvious and the not-so-obvious.
As a taxpayer in a tough economy, that is exactly the type of critical attention to detail I want and need from all my elected officials. Mrs. Smith’s example is one to be emulated, not criticized.
Amy M. Fankhauser
Howell