No Olive Branch for Schools

County commissioners have apparently never heard of the phrase piling on.

When, as occurred last week after a special meeting, an interview to a local television reporter by Nathan Peters, Jr., can be transformed from a discussion about taxing county residents for operations at the landfill into a monologue on the school tax referendum, it demonstrates that commissioners will use their bully pulpit to advance an agenda at any opportunity.

Folks probably get it by now; there are likely not five votes for the referendum sitting on the podium in the Board of County Commissioners meeting room.

Several commissioners have made it clear, they are not in favor of the referendum passing and whatever lengths, so be it.

So much for that olive branch - though it extends to the city it does not apparently to the school district even though all five commissioners have offspring that have gone through, or are currently in, the public school system.

Consider, though, that this little sermon came after a meeting at which commissioners put themselves in position to assess a tax - other government jargon was used, but a tax it would be - for operations at the landfill.

They did not pass any tax, it was noted repeatedly; commissioners are now in formal position to do so for the coming fiscal year.

As was pointed out during this special meeting, the landfill is not, as many might assume, where household garbage some residents leave in curbside barrels for pick-up once or twice a week goes to linger.

So commissioners might tax every household for what they assert is an essential service, much like schools, but which a significant portion of residents paying the tax might never directly use, much like schools.

Commissioners hope to make up the deficit the county runs on the landfill, which is no small chunk of change, about $900,000, largely through higher tipping fees, which is how it should be, a much more user pay-as-you-go operation.

And there is no sympathy from this space that the county runs such a deficit, or that is has gotten that large, on any operation since, as was so delicately put several weeks ago by one of the commissioners, government needs to learn how to survive and be lean in tough times, but also in flush times.

Several of these commissioners did not in previous years.

So the logic of standing upright and pronouncing that somehow the county was being more fiscally responsible than the school board is laughable, regardless of how one stands on the school tax levy.

But mostly it was unconstructive and short-sighted - or in other words, too often county government.