Thanks due

Thanks are due to Chad Olsen, City Administrator in St. Helens, for his continued efforts to find solutions to the budget crisis.

Over several weeks of council indecision, Olsen presented ideas and made suggestions. The three options he brought to the table at Wednesday's special work session finally "took" and the council agreed by consensus to use one of them as a first step to bringing the budget into balance.

The chamber was nearly full with visitors, several of them employees. The agreed upon path avoids any immediate staff layoffs (for weeks, at least four people have been concerned about losing their jobs by the end of the year) and calls for "everything on the table" when the budget committee convenes in January to start work on the FY 2009-10 budget.

The decision was a good one and the work ahead will be difficult, but I don't think we'd have gotten to this point (finally) without Chad's efforts.

So, thank you, Chad.