City Of Lawton Could Fix Trash Service With Recent Federal Money

You may or may not know, President Biden's American Rescue Plan Act signed a few weeks ago just provided the City of Lawton with a little more than $17million dollars in federal cash to fix problems encountered over this crazy pandemic. Instead of letting our city leaders hush that money into a slush fund, this could be our chance to correct so many of the unpopular actions they've taken over the last seventeen months.

First and foremost, this money could be used to purchase and fund additional equipment and employment for any lacking civil department... most noticeably looking around the neighborhoods, it could be the answer for our recently cut but more expensive trash service in town.... but that's not all...

If you didn't know, our police department is underfunded and understaffed at the moment. Depending on who you talk to, Lawton only has about half the officers a city of this size normally employs. One of the reasons is, there's a huge problem with pay in the department. From what we're told, base pay is extremely low compared to other like-sized towns in our region, and there's even a pay cap system in place that has officers not wanting to take promotions up the ladder. Again, can't confirm because nobody wearing the badge will go on record, but that's the story given to us. After hearing so many different tales of Lawton's growing crime rates and the mayors office trying to suppress that information, this windfall of federal monies could be an answer... especially since bonus wages can be applied retroactively back to January 2020.

Given the explicit wording of how this money could be used in the water and sewer sector of our civil services, maybe the city council could finally provide a sanitary hand washing station for the Lawton city workers tasked with repairing and rebuilding the sewer systems in town. Imagine that, a city that forced masks on people for sanitary reasons expected sewer workers to work all day with filthy hands after numerous requests. It's crazy.

You should absolutely get on the phone and shoot an email to your city councilor and start rattling your saber to ensure this money gets proper use for the good of the community before they start buying other huge empty buildings in town.