DATE: Sunday, September 28, 1997            TAG: 9709260311

SECTION: COMMENTARY              PAGE: J1   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Opinion

SOURCE: DAVE ADDIS

                                            LENGTH:   73 lines

MAYBE NORFOLK NEEDS A BREAK TO GET ITS ACT TOGETHER AGAIN

Last week, after a series of disasters, the military parked its planes and everybody sat down for a nice, calm chat about what they're doing.

It's time, I think, for the city of Norfolk to do the same.

Nobody has died, yet, from the city's misadventures. But if embarrassment were a fatal condition, a lot of municipal mugwumps and their underlings would be on respirators right now.

First we learned that a third of the people who draw Norfolk paychecks and live in the city - 767 of them, including Councilman Paul R. Riddick - had not paid their personal property taxes.

Next we learned that one of Norfolk's newest fire stations was found, during an inspection, to have eight violations of the fire code, including weak or dead batteries in its smoke alarms.

What's next? Pictures of a vice cop bar-hopping in Ocean View with Marv Albert?

The fire station affair, frankly, has the smell of some internal bitterness about it, as if somebody with an axe to grind called in an inspector to prove some petty point. Yes, it's really bad form for the firefighters to have dead batteries in their smoke alarms, but it's doubtful that anybody's life was ever in danger. Not that any of us homeowners should follow that sloppy example. We don't have fire trucks sitting in our garages.

What's more troubling, though, was the reaction among a number of municipal workers - most notably Councilman Riddick - when city Treasurer Joseph T. Fitzpatrick decided to get tough and start deducting the past-due taxes from the workers' paychecks.

Here's what Riddick said: ``They can take it from me, I don't care. But to take it from the average worker I think is awful.''

Here's what a Public Works employee who met with city officials said: ``They told us, `It's done, there's nothing we can do.' Now it's cutting into people's mortgages and car bills.''

Awful? The councilman finds it ``awful'' that city employees must pay their taxes like the rest of us? Taxes that pay their very salaries?

And does the aggrieved Public Works employee believe that only people who have city jobs are burdened with mortgages and car payments?

The mayor of Norfolk, Paul Fraim, is an able man of conscience, patience and good humor. I would not presume to tell him how to do his job. But in his shoes, in the wake of these public embarrassments, I would be tempted to invite every person who draws a city paycheck to Harbor Park one afternoon and speak to them from home plate over the public address system.

I would say something like this:

``Folks, a city job does not make you a member of a privileged class. Your neighbor who works over at the Ford plant doesn't get free pickup trucks. Your cousin who stocks shelves down at the Food Lion doesn't get free groceries. Similarly, a job with the city doesn't mean you get a free pass on your taxes.

``Actually, quite the opposite is true. Since we rely on the good graces of taxpaying citizens for our daily bread, it is necessary for us to set a good example. Every one of us wants our paycheck on time. If that didn't happen, we'd be angry. But for that to happen, taxes have to be paid on time. By everybody. Especially us.

``Further, we waste taxpayers' dollars when we have to send one gang of city workers out to chase down another gang of city workers to get them to pay their taxes. You guys down in the Public Works department might find that kinda funny, but I don't. Every couple of years I have to go out and explain this sort of lunacy to the voters.

``Every dollar we spend cajoling you into paying your bills is a dollar we could spend someplace else. With a little luck, we probably could save enough money to buy shiny new 9-volt batteries for every fire station in the city.''

Reality being a cruel master, Mayor Fraim would dare give that speech only in his dreams. If he gave it in real life, 700 surly tax-shirkers likely would chase him up a tree someplace.

And it might be a long time before a fireman with a ladder came by to help him down. MEMO: Dave Addis is the editor of Commentary. Reach him at 446-2726, or

addis(AT)worldnet.att.net.

Send Suggestions or Comments to webmaster@scholar.lib.vt.edu