Cheated and ripped off - Chapter 9 Exercise A

           During my time working for Hot Topic Inc. there were several times that I was cheated and witnessed upper management take advantage of other members of the staff in their Huntington Mall location.

            I was hired into Hot Topic as the assistant manager in November 2009 after I was forced out of management at Steve and Barry’s when the company went bankrupt.  When I first entered this company, I thought I would love the job.  Working in an environment that had a love of music in the same place I could use my retail management experience seemed like a perfect fit.

            After working through the holiday season I started to notice that there were many members of the staff that seemed to misunderstand or misread the schedule which resulted in them getting written-up or terminated from the company.  By the time March 2010 came around, I started playing closer attention to my general manager and how she created the schedules.   During this time I heard from some of her friends that she was looking for a reason to terminate me.

            In the middle of March, one of my friends on the job was terminated for not showing up to work for a scheduled shift.  Luckily, every day that I worked I printed out the schedule from our main computer.  I discovered that our general manager was changing the schedule and not letting anyone on the staff know about it in order to terminate the people that she did not like.

            With the evidence in hand, I set up a meeting with our district manager and spoke to him about what was going on inside of his company.  He did not seemed at all concerned and sided with his general manager who had worked for the company for a number of years instead of myself, an assistant manager who had only been with the company five months.  After that I turned in my keys and left the company .

            Within the last month, I spoke to the current assistant manager at Hot Topic and he informed me that the general manager had been fired for doctoring the schedules and for being on the clock while she was not on mall property.  I would like to think that my investigation set off the district and region managers to start looking for problems within the location.

Tri-State Airport Authority Meeting - April 15, 2010

EDITOR’S NOTE:  As part of my Reporting Public Affairs class at Marshall University, I have been asked to pick an organization and sit in on their meetings for the next three months.  I have chosen to cover the Tri-State Airport Authority.  Once a month I will write an article that will convey what happened at those meetings.

            The Tri-State Airport Authority met on April 15 to discuss finances, upcoming airport renovation projects and the adoption of new airport rules and regulations.

            At the start of the meeting, Financial Director Don Wiseman brought forward selecting a budget committee for the upcoming fiscal year.  Wiseman moved to use the same three budget committee members that held the positions for the previous year.  The three board members agreed to continue with their positions and the board approved.

            After the budget committee was selected, Wiseman spoke about the airport’s finances for the month of March.  Unlike February, the expenses for March were higher than the income by $22,841.  Wiseman contributed this to the year-to-date fuel sales.

            Wiseman also spoke about Allegiant Airways decreased enplanements versus that of U.S. Airways which have increased.  Airport Executive Director Jerry Brienza said that these numbers were due to Allegiant adding more flights.  Brienza said if you looked at the numbers, Allegiant’s passenger rate was actually up.

            Wiseman spoke about Tri-State Airport’s recent audit and said that they were compliant and there were no bad findings that could contribute to them losing any federal funding.

            During the meeting, Second Vice President Kevin Gunderson was promoted to First Vice President by the board and Marc Sprouse took the position of Second Vice President.

            As for updates to the airport, Brienza spoke about the installment of monitors in the airport lobby that could show advertisement.  He said this could be a new source of revenue.  There is also a Master Plan Update going into affect.  The last one accomplished by Tri-State Airport was in 2003.  This update could include the Southside Development Plan which could encompass the creation of a brand new terminal, control tower site and a direct link to Interstate 64.  This Master Plan Update could go underway as early as July.

Meeting minutes versus newspaper article

            For this project, I chose the Cabell County Commission and the meeting that was held on March 4, 2010.  The article about the commission meeting was in the Herald Dispatch and was written by Christian Alexandersen.

            The article written for the Herald Dispatch only focused on one part of the commission meeting.  This was the bids for a new ambulance station in Milton which would serve the city and the surrounding areas.  Alexandersen wrote about the bid process and the possible location for the ambulance station.   Within the article, there were interviews with two of the commissioners about their feelings concerning the ambulance station and the bid prospects, as well as numbers of what it typical when it comes to construction bids like these.

            While the ambulance station was a major part of the Cabell County Commission meeting, it is not the only topic that was discussed.  There were several new employment appointments, such as Denise G. Bias as a full-time EMT and Samuel Stowasser as a full-time Alternative Sentencing Officer for Home Confinement.

            There were also reappointments to the planning commission and a grant application approval for $15,000 toward improvements to the courthouse.  Another grant application for $2,000 toward a literacy program was also approved.  The Cabell County Commission also moved to approve increasing the county’s contribution to KYOVA from $15,000.00 to $20,000.00 for the development of a comprehensive multi-modal metropolitan transportation plan.

            While there were many things going on at the meeting, I can understand why Alexandersen chose to narrow the scope of his article to only write about the bids for the construction of an ambulance station.  It seemed from the minutes that this was what the main point of discussion was.

Huntington City Council approves 2011 budget

            Huntington City Council passed the 2011 fiscal budget after making $867,861 in cuts which will lead to 20-day furloughs for city employees and an estimated 10 layoffs.

            The budget, which was approved on March 22, took the region’s recession-weakened economy into account and worked on ways to make the budget work while eliminating furloughs and layoffs that would effect the police and fire departments.

            In the proposed budget, furloughs and layoffs were projected within the fire and police departments. The Police Department was expected to layoff eight civilian employees which would have left the department with only one civilian employee.  The Fire Department was also going to have to layoff all three of their civilian employees.  These layoffs would have left the clerical work in the hands of the officers of these departments.

            In the approved budget, council members decided to make the cuts elsewhere and restore money to the Huntington Fire and Police Departments.  After restoring $432,155 to the fire department’s $10.1 million budget and nearly the same amount to the police department’s budget, these two entities will now be saved from the layoffs and furloughs that were expected by the projected budget, yet the police and fire departments will still have to make combined reductions of over $300,000 after the elimination of the furloughs and layoffs that were outlined in the mayor’s proposed budget.

            While the fire and police departments have been saved from furloughs and layoffs, the money added to their budgets, according to Huntington Mayor Kim Wolfe, will have to be cut from departments and services.  Other options include a one percent occupation tax or raising the city’s user fee from $3 to $4.  This $1 increase in the user fee could raise $1.5 million in the next year.

            This one percent occupation tax could be implemented under the home rule plan, which was started in 2008.  Under this plan, if the one percent occupation tax were approved then the weekly $3 user fee would have to be repealed.

            Other reductions include $26,573 for legal, $32,971 in building maintenance, $27,918 in finance, 35,987 in engineering, $155,596 in the motor pool, $100 in purchasing, $102,345 from the floodwall, $198,871 from police, $120,000 from fire and $165,000 from personnel.

            Another cut that appears within the approved budget is for the Huntington-Cabell-Huntington Animal Shelter.  There will be a $25,000 reduction from the usual $100,000 contribution.  This budget reduction will result in the layoff of one part-time dog warden position and the inability to fill one full-time dog warden position that is currently vacant according to Shelter director Anita Asbury.

            As a way to increase funding, Wolfe will bring a “revenue-generating” proposal to council members that could eliminate the need for furloughs and layoffs.

            When Wolfe is ready to present his plan, the Huntington Finance Committee will hold three meetings.  The first of these meetings will allow for Wolfe to explain his plan to the committee while the second meeting will allow for comments from the public.  At the third and final meeting, there will be committee debate and a vote on whether the proposal will move on to the full council.

            The Financial Committee hopes that Wolfe will be ready to start these meetings within a few weeks because the approved Huntington city budget will take effect on July 1 when the 2011 fiscal year begins.

City of Huntington Proposed Budgets by Major Departmental Expenditure and Share of Total Budgets 2009-2011

Revenue Source	Amount 2009	%	Amount 2010	%	Amount 2011	%
Police	10,982,695	26%	11,594,788	26%	10,741,819	27%
Fire	9,991,781	24%	10,486,344	24%	10,121,153	26%
Insurance Programs	8,200,075	20%	8,423,317	19%	8,423,317	21%
Streets	1,954,792	4%	2,538,246	6%	2,142,703	5%
Contributions	1,439,949	3%	1,404,260	3%	1,194,534	3%
Other	8,648,558	21%	10,171,921	23%	6,919,213	17%
Total	41,217,850	100%	44,618,876	100%	39,542,739	100%

Source: City of Huntington