Hire people who can do job right in the first place

I am absolutely incensed about this latest misuse of our hard-earned taxpayer dollars ["$800,000 to fix street dept.," page one, May 14]. Consultants! Investigations! Payouts! When does it end?

I was under the impression that when people are hired to do a job, they're hired because they know how to do that job. That's the only way I and most other people ever get hired, and we don't get to keep those jobs if we just bluff our way through. Obviously, this isn't the case in the transportation department.

So we taxpayers are expected to fork over more than $800,000 in this collapsed economy so that the people who don't know how to do their jobs keep getting paid to not do their jobs properly, and we have to pay consultants to show those people how to do the jobs they're supposed to be qualified to do. Is there ever going to be a solution to this madness?

Instead of hiring consultants, why don't we fire the inept and useless people who have caused the problems and, for heaven's sake, hire people who can earn their keep by knowing how to get their jobs done in an efficient, timely and -- most of all -- cost-effective manner?

I know I'm not alone when I say that I'm absolutely sick of my tax dollars being sucked into an endless abyss that yields no satisfactory results.

-- Marianne Moon, Seattle

Seattle's leaders are lacking

Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels defending his actions on the Seattle street-department fiasco is a matter of incompetence by his bloviating sycophants. What a disgusting waste of taxpayers' dollars.

Mayor Nickels is sorely lacking in management skills and Deputy Mayor Tim Ceis is lacking in everything.

-- Walter Montgomery, Seattle