There’s hope for Methuen

Needless to say that I have been following the issue of the $170,000 reimbursement from Methuen for undocumented overtime by five police officers.  Ellen Bahan has been writing about this problem long before it became news because she knew how grants are “managed” by city officials.  Actually, when Chief Joseph Solomon said that he had no idea as to who was in charge of the grants or the billing process, we published documents proving that Chief Solomon was the person in charge of managing the grants.  We also discovered a time sheet showing that he attended a 4-hour training session explaining how he should do the paperwork – which meant that he was in charge of the grant and the billing.

Now city councilors are going to debate if there is a chance that they could issue an ordinance by which these police officers could be forced to return the overtime collected and have not been able to prove they worked. 

City Councilor Joseph Leone took the lead filing a resolution seeking the reimbursement of $170,000 because he believes that if the money is returned, it will be taxpayers’ money and that will not be fair.  Isn’t that refreshing?  A politician thinking for the benefit of the people.