We have a little good news, bad news going here in Albany. The bad news is that Rod Jolivette, no longer an Assistant Fire Chief, is back on the job as a lieutenant. The good news is that as a lieutenant, he’s in a position that is less likely to result in the abuse of authority that led to his initial termination…that same termination that City Manager Al Lott overturned without explaining to anyone why he wasn’t out on his butt.
And really, this is just another symptom of the deeper problems in this town.
Per his own letter to Jolivette, Lott outlined the case for termination beautifully. Unfortunately, Lott wrote this is a letter that granted Jolivette’s appeal. Now, if you or I got a letter outlining how many ways we screwed up and didn’t mention a single positive thing, we’d be pretty sure that we were unemployed. Jolivette might have thought the same thing. But no, he’s still got a job.
There are a lot of people out there who are furious that Jolivette still has a job, and it’s past time for Lott to step up and actually tell us why he overturned Fire Chief James Carswell. Granted, we know that he just caved to pressure from PCCI, but it’s time to step up and actually just admit it.
This town will continue to bleed jobs and people so long as things like this continue. Young people listen to their parents, even if they don’t realize they do. They hear about how screwed up this town is, and they look for an exit. So, when the leave for college, they stay gone. Instead of having an educated work force that would help attract high paying jobs in fields like technology, we’re ecstatic that we attracted CallTech (now Teleperformance), a technical support company that has an alarmingly high turnover rate. That was years ago though, and nothing new since then really.
So now that Jolivette is back on the job, I hope he steps up and performs well in his new role. He had better, because a lot of eyes in this town are focused on him. However, more eyes need to be directed to Al Lott, who through this and his less than timely response to the Buie issue has managed to put a bulls eye on his back. He may well become the face for the abuses that are permitted in this town.
