Extremely good advice Jeanne but I fear that Ms. Daniels has other agendas.

Thank you. That's completely logical. Unfortunately, I don't think our current mayor can see this yet. Or, perhaps she wishes to deliberately bottleneck access to information to staff and ultimately to the residents. "Transparency" appears to be one of those political promises that has been broken.

Another example of the danger of inexperience. Let's hope the damage can be mitigated. Perhaps if residents and businesses mailed a CC of any correspondence to the city manager's office, there will be minimal harm done.

I worked for a company for 5 years that was required to send quarterly payments to many towns in our area including Troy. Generally when these payments of thousands of dollars were sent out they were addressed to the attention of the sitting Mayor (many Mayor's ego's prevented us from changing that to a city mgr or city employee in most cases). Every quarter at least one Mayor would manage to get their towns payment "lost" on their desk before it could get processed by the proper city employee. In fact, when I took over sending these payments out, I began to send them overnight with a required signature so I could prove the city received the payment. On more then one occasion a Mayor took it upon themselves to deposit the check without going thru proper accounting procedures--its never fun to tell a city accountant that "yes the check you can't find has been deposited." I really can't imagine being so vein that Mayor Daniels would risk processing of city funds or risk loosing city funds because she thinks she should be the only one opening the Mayor's mail.

a couple more thoughts for my comment above:

The agreements the company I worked for stated that should payment not be there within either 30 or 45 days of the end of quarter depending on which town the payment went to, large penalties would be assessed. in some cases the penalties were greater then the amount due for the quarter to begin with. The company I worked for closed down several years ago so I have moved on to other things, but this was a big part of my job then, it was always very stressful to make sure all the towns got thier payments on time, and if the town questioned that receipt you had to be ready in a flash to prove that they received that payment. Mayor Daniels could thru her actions/inactions cause issues with companies that have this kind of agreement with the city either in proving that payment was received by the City or proving it was in on time.

Jeanne- Unfortunately our current mayor has another agenda than our wonderful city.. At first I admit I contributed her ineptitude to lack of training for her position, now I know better. As mayor one can't just work for the 7,000 citizens who voted for her, think like her and vote as she does, a true mayor will represent all 57,000+ citizens of Troy. I am sure that the present mayor sees nothing wrong with her behavior, but as an adult with an extremely high profile position, what is she teaching our children who are the real future of tomorrow today.

I have a question: Why does the ex-mayor or anyone else care how our new mayor does routine aspects of her job? Give her a chance to prove herself based on what she can or can't accomplish throughout her term. But give her a break--She hasn't been in office but a couple of months. Don't know why everyone thinks our last mayor was all that terrific anyway; Only item on her agenda was raising taxes to pay for all the city workers' healthcare, pensions, and early retirements.

Therese: It was Mayor Daniels herself who publicly made an issue of "routine aspects of her job," implying that what was traditionally a routine aspect of the city staff's job was somehow an invasion of her "privacy." From which I infer that she has something to hide.

The Mayor has spent so much time thinking about protecting citizens from the government that she can't seem to understand that now she IS the government. We need to be protected from her!

The mayor's routine job elements are supposed to be policy making in concert with the rest of council. As a weak-mayor form of government - the "mundane" routines of everyday business activities are supposed to be carried out by the city staff. We have a Council-Manager form of government. Very different from a "Strong Mayor" form of government. This difference, organizationally, is important.

Theresa, right now you are the only one that has said anything smart. No, I don't think
the Mayor's mail should be opened, all they have to do is put it in an envelope and
mail it to her, or have her pick it up at city hall and she can take care of it right then and there. Mayor Schilling was in the city hall every day just like some other council
people were so I am sure she can pick it up, But, I would consider it a Federal offense
and it doesn't necessary have to say personal on the envelop either. And i would write e-mails either because they look at that also. Now let her do her job and some of you older ones, just retire. It is about time.

It really doesn't matter if any of you think it is a federal offense. The facts of the matter are that the mail addressed to the Mayor of Troy are public property. In actual fact, the Mayor does not have any proprietary rights to the mail. She also doesn't have the right to make city business more difficult. She was elected mayor, not administration overlord. The city council's collective decisions guide the administration. The staff reports to the city manager, and he is responsible to city council. You will all just have to get over your misconceptions.

At the risk of upsetting the status quo, opening business mail is often the easiest way to prevent fraud. It is the number one action that prevents fraud in an organization.