I just wonder how they manage to take a bath if most of the time is spent thinking they walk on water? You can get pretty dirty with this type of self image.

Good luck Page County Citizens.

Get ready dear Citizens, it has been announced that during Tuesday’s Board of Supervisors meeting the “County Office Building Update” will be discussed, notice this is the last item on the agenda. One must wonder why last, maybe because everyone will have heard enough and will have gone home. However, those who remain will hear the news, it will cost more than originally thought, and the number has climbed to something around $10 million – not a fact, just thinking out loud.
One might wonder, what has the Board of Supervisors done to ensure that the needs of the citizens have been met? Or is this a case where the outgoing members of the Board are getting a little bit concerned about whether or not their name will appear on the plaque which will adorn the front of the building? Or, does the Board not want to waste the time to do an analysis to determine what the citizens want because they do not care what the citizens want? We know what the Board wants, a 50,000 square foot building on their $600,000 lot, but is that what the citizens of Page County want?
So, where does the BOS plan to get the money to build this complex? Is it new taxes? Or, will they rob Peter to pay Paul? This Board is known for telling the citizens one thing and doing something else. Maybe they have been enticed by the contract with Warren County. Were we not told that that money would pay off the landfill in the next 40 years?

The Chairman can, and I can only assume does, spend a lot of time with him, but the rest of the Supervisors generally seem to get their information through the packets or individual phone calls. How much preparation they do I can only assume. But between the formal meetings, and the fact that they have regular jobs in addition to their Supervisor duties, strongly suggests that they don’t get much more information than we do.

Because this was a contract, one can infer that they talked about it in their closed sessions over time. If they did, and they still ended up with a contract this frightening, that’s another problem all together.

The most disturbing thing is that it appears that the Supervisors don’t have the information, either. They have briefing packets, delivered a few days in advance, but no indication that any hard questions are being asked of the people who are briefing them.

This is not the behavior of a commercial Board of Directors, and not adequate for people who are spending $90M of taxpayer money every year.

What can be done? More must be expected of our county administrator in terms of disclosing, answering questions, briefing the supervisors and the public. It is not sufficient to negotiate a land deal for $66,000 an acre in a down market, and say “that’s all I could get.” It is not sufficient to sign a 15 year, no escalation, no escape contract, and say “it was a Bird in Hand.”

The Chairman of our Board was perfectly capable of badgering and questioning the School Board Superintendent about expenditures. But his job would be more effectively done if he started badgering and questioning our County Administrator instead.

1) Agreeing to a daily fee that is12% below costs is irresponsible to the extreme. If you’re going to sell something and know your not expecting to make a profit is one thing, but selling something for less than what it cost you is insane.
2) The 25 cent per ton increase per year is even more conspicuous for its ludicrous lack of economic cents (pun intended). Let’s see, we start the second year with only a 0.0080645% increase. That dismal annual cost-of-doing-business increase then decrements in the following years even further; i.e. Third year – 0.008%, fourth year – 0.0079365%, fifth year – 0.007874%, sixth year – 0.0073529 and so on.

The only competent means of applying an annual increase is to tie it to some universally acceptable percentage rate increase index. If a responsible contract can’t be incorporated then there should be NO DEAL. To me this piece of garbage contract (pun intended again) is a non- starter!

I appreciate that the Board of Supervisors is looking for sustainable ways to offset the cost of running the county, but there’s no need to rush into a 15 year contract.

Why not take time to get local citizens on board? This is a recipe for a lot of future resentments if an unpredictable problem occurs.