Steve no flipping way! This is just plain wrong. He cannot work in his own budget. This is why everyone leaves Franklin.

Color me surprised! The city set a working budget of $700,000 and then picked the plan that was over 30% greater than that. Yeah it’s easy to not be frugal when spending other people’s money.

Ridiculous.

I understand the employees may not care for the building they work in but they need to be realistic. Not everyone works in a million dollar building. Yikes!

We can thank our common council members for having our backs-oh wait, nope, we can’t.

Okay, hasn’t everyone worked in a building that was depressing or painted the wrong color?

i do, i work from home!

We don’t need this. What else can that money be used for?

Seems to me this money could have gone for a few more firefighters and EMT’s.

How am I not surprised that Taylor was all for this alongside the Mayor? Unbelievable… the individuals running this city are so out of touch.

Shiny toys for important people. Everyone else can starve.

But you want to raise taxes for police and fire departments because there isn’t enough money in the budget. Forget it…..

Is this a bad joke? We’re supposed to shell out a whopping $1.3M – almost twice what was initially intended, and even that initial amount is ridiculous – because employees find the building “depressing”? That’s a reason?

I am so angry about this. When I taught at Alverno College years back, my office was – literally – a closet. One day it stored television carts and random A/V equipment, and the next day it held a desk and a file cabinet with my name slapped on the door. Astonishingly, I survived working in a “depressing” building because I received a paycheck out of the deal.

Cheaper to stick everyone on an anti depressant

Need a referendum to pay for more police and fire but have plenty for a remodel!!!!

Not sure how I feel about an alderman publicly calling the building a “turd” in its current state? oh wait – – – yes I do! PATHETIC! Maybe if we could get some people representing Franklin that had a bit more class and professionalism they wouldn’t consider this crazy irresponsibile idea for our money!

thank you, I was just going to say the same thing!

Ooooh, how exciting! Maybe next year we can build a mayoral mansion that will rival the governors mansion.(sarcasm)

200% over budget

Why isnt this money going towards the increased request for the police and firemen!??!

OK… Question to the Mayor and City Council… How Many additional Police Officers could we hire for $1,000.000 ?

I guess I need to get more involved now. This doesn’t seem like a good use of funds at this time. And many people work in buildings that are not “modern” everyday. Spending more money because we already built/spent on other projects isn’t a good reason

Then we should vote the Police & Fire Referendum down so they HAVE to use these funds for Fire & Police

The referendum as it is worded/ written, gives them carte blanche for whatever they want in future years.

the taxes have gone down in the rest of the state. Franklin is like on it’s own little island and protected from tax reductions…

There is nothing wrong with the way the current building looks! Leave it and save the money. Really can’t afford Police and Firefighters and threaten the public. But can waste millions on a new facelift. Just another joke from the Franklin Govt

Ridiculous! I worked in many buildings with no windows, no air conditioning, in basements with no heat etc and do not agree with building to make it pretty. Maybe we need a referendum on this as well.

I can get behind updating the HVAC system and replacing the roof if need be. Those are functional things. But to make the building look pretty is unnecessary. If the employees that work there are depressed coming into the building every day as this alderman says, it more than likely has to do with the job and not the way the building looks on the outside.

Our mayor wants a pretty new house on OUR money

Not worth having to raise our taxes again this year since the budget is “so tight”

Franklin: “We need more money to pay for the extra fire fighters and police we need” Also Franklin: “check out our sweet new city hall. Only 1.3 million.”

10 years ago we specifically moved to Franklin, now we bide our time to leave it… and consider cutting it even shorter!

Too bad they could care less about the taxpayers opinions and will just ignore what we say.

It was explained in a previous post this money isthere for this… ear marked and voted on some time ago… further I want to know how many of you live in 40 year old houses without any updates???

Good question. Back to the social media comments.

House built 1982. Only furnace, roof, water heater, toilet and faucet. The essentials.

It’s probably depressing to work there because it’s town hall for a town that wastes money on stuff like that while asking to raise taxes for more important things like police.

I don’t mind City Hall being remodeled considering the age , but to want to spend an additional $600,000 to give the building some pop and zing is an outrage.

Of course they are, probably give the mayor his own personalized bedazzled bedet.

Why is it that anytime this city wants to do something, it costs over a million dollars. Maybe they should look at who they are using as a contractor!​

To be fair I’ve been attacked on social media by people who didn’t have the facts, who didn’t read my entire post, who had their own biases, etc.  Here are some comments made by Mayor Olson on his own Facebook page with my responses that follow in red:

Yesterday the NOW posted an article on the decision of the Common Council to move forward with the remodeling of the front entrances to City Hall. They cross posted the article to the Franklin Community page on Facebook. The article resulted in a lot of mis-information, assumptions, accusations, name calling and anger.

The article did result in criticism from the taxpaying public. No surprise the mayor who has become increasingly thin-skilled was upset.

Sources of revenue to pay for capital improvements comes from long term borrowing, refunds from loans (Ryan Creek Interceptor), landfill siting fees (amounts vary year to year), investment income and transfers from other funds excess balances. Only the debt service on long term borrowing is charged against the tax levy (and consequently paid by us taxpayers.) That’s where the money comes from. We currently have a fund balance (savings) of almost $4 million in that fund. Thus, no additional money is needed from the taxpayers.

True. But it can also be taken as the city has all this money laying around that it can spend, so what’s the problem, folks? The problem is it’s their money, not the mayor’s.

Given that our fund balance for the capital improvement fund is about $4 million, a majority of the council and I feel that it’s best to do the better design that will better serve the community especially with the improvements at the Ballpark Commons, the library and the PD.

The “majority” of the council did NOT feel that it was best to go with the most expensive plan. Half did. Totally inaccurate statement by the mayor.

We also need to compare to our neighboring city halls, almost all are either brand new or have been substantially remodeled.

At the risk of not sounding at all analytical, so what? Who cares? Since when has City Hall cared about all the improvements going on in surrounding communities?

And for those who say “use the money for police officers”, this is one time money that can’t sustain long term commitment to being available and would be exhausted in about 30 months if it were used to pay new officers.

Absolutely true. However the mayor made a major political blunder, obviously not understanding the political optics. His argument is not persuasive at all. He claims Franklin is frugal, and that’s laughable. This is yet another example of how Franklin spends unnecessarily.

The people commenting here are smarter than the mayor gives them credit for who claims they’re misinformed. Not so. They understand the budget for the remodel called for $700,000 and then the mayor and half the council nonchalantly voted to nearly double the expenditure. All at a time when City Hall struggled for months about how to address a shortage of emergency personnel. But in mere minutes, BAM, let’s beautify City Hall so workers aren’t depressed.

The correct vote on this was a slam dunk NO.

Perception is reality.

To quote a phrase the mayor made in 2018:

Wrong project at wrong place at wrong time.

There’s more.