Officials in Rockwood need to step it up

We are deeply disappointed with some Rockwood officials in their handling of water department issues.
Weeks after the Roane County News wrote about the existence of a letter from a state official telling the city it has been illegally mingling funds between the water and gas utilities, many of these officials have been burying their heads in the sand.
We don’t have that letter, some city officals said. Then some of them, including utility director Rod King, seemed to want to continue to ignore its existence.
The Roane County News posted a copy of the state official’s letter in full on its website, and the same officials continued to act like it didn’t exist.
We believe these officials when they say they did not personally receive the letter. We believe that somewhere, an honest mistake in the delivery was made.
However, after once these officials learned of such a letter, the responsible thing to do would have been to seek it out.
Did they need to be whacked on the head with it?
All it took was a single contact with Dennis Dycus, the head of the Comptroller’s Office Division of Municipal Audit, for the Roane County News to get the letter.
We believe that is all it would have taken any of the city officials to get their own copy — if for some reason they doubted the validity of the copy the newspaper posted.
People who are elected, or in the case of King, paid to look out for the best interests of the people, should show more character than what we have seen here.
We could use a lot less fingerpointing and a lot more personal responsibility in getting this mess straightened out.
 The people deserve better.