Staunton resident has question about marshal

To the editor:

In June of 2015, I was noticing one consistent empty seat at monthly board meetings and it belonged to the town marshal.

He actually has only been to one meeting and that was when he was introduced to the town at the meeting and that was late in 2014. Each month I ask about where our marshal is, and each month I am told that it is a part-time job. I do find it interesting that the previous marshals managed to come to meetings and this one can't even when he is off from his full-time job.

In fact, at the October 2015 meeting when I inquired as to if we had a marshal or not I was answered in a demeaning way by the board president. In the minutes of the meeting I was answered as follows by Mr. Kirchner with, "He works too and it's a part time job boys and girls." I really think this is not the way to speak to us on a content that has been questioned repeatedly.

I decided to do a little basic math, knowing law enforcement is usually paid based upon size of community, crime rate and such. So the marshal makes $583 a month and based on our community of between 500-600 people would rate his pay at $10 per hour (this is a very generous rate for our little town). So $583/$10=58.3 hours per month. That works out to 1.9 hours per day or 13.6 hours a week. He might spend half an hour every other week. We are being ripped off.

It is felt that if the marshal does not want to take the job serious, they should step down and let someone who actually wants to be present for the town. I tried to get serious answers at monthly board meetings, but was met with a lack of seriousness to this situation. At one point the president did state that he would make sure that the marshal would start coming to the meetings and we are still waiting for that to happen.

Debbie Montague

Staunton