Spent Ideas

The pocketbook is already a tad bit lighter and future income appears constrained so the logical course of action is - spend and spend some more, naturally.

County commissioners might be willing to ignore, at all costs, even broaching the subject of county-wide voting, yet they are willing to maintain the status quo no matter what it costs their constituents.

Two more exhibits are currently before taxpayers and consider that against the backdrop of this year, when three of the five commissioners are up for re-election and the associated potential for upheaval in the dynamics on the board.

Start with the decision that taxpayers ought to pay for the concept of consolidating several of the county's major departments in a more centralized location.

Mind you, commissioners are not seeking public input or a voter mandate on adding another half penny to the sales tax being levied in the county.

If it is possible, and the hope inside the Robert Moore Building is that it will be, commissioners, by super-majority vote, or four of five commissioners, are positioning themselves to add the half-penny.

The revenue generated would be put toward construction of a complex in the vicinity White City that would house, primarily, the Road Department, Public Works and Mosquito Control.

If there aren't four votes - and how many times have commissioners entered the meeting room without the vote appearing to be fairly set would be a worthy question, particularly in light of, say, those dinners the five sit down to after many a regular meeting - the public would have to be given a say and commissioners likely wouldn't be interested in the questions that might cross the public's mind.

Such as, why after five years of unprecedented property tax collections, do commissioners not have enough in the piggy bank to pay for the consolidation they propose?

Why, for instance, should the public foot the bill to allow commissioners to construct the mirrors and start the smoke concerning fiscal responsibility and efficiency, when, given, say, for example, the emptiness of the piggy bank in front of them, commissioners have pretty much defined fiscal irresponsibility this decade?

What exactly, in other words, has all the experience in years of serving on this Board of County Commissioners brought to the bottom line?

Further, how exactly, commissioners should explain, does putting all those departments under one roof provide a genuine foundation for fiscal efficiencies when the county has yet to even put in place the semblance of a uniform work order policy across all operations?

Is it supposed to happen by osmosis?

In addition, why should taxpayers be soaked for additional sales tax when they have been paying a full penny for two-and-a-half years for a hospital which has yet to be more than a cleared piece of ground?

Finally, what is the source of the hubris that compels commissioners to extend, once again, their hand to an already tax-burdened public for the freight to maintain a train that has been kept together for years with back-door tax increases fueled by the real estate market?

This brings us to the second topic because taxpayers are about to be further weighted on by the Honeyville Storm Shelter.

As was pretty much laid out in the board packet last week, the shelter will never be a FEMA approved shelter or have a federal certification of any kind and as a result commissioners intend to take out a loan of $337,000 or so to pay off the bill of around $700,000 and some change.

There appears to be several factors - the federal requirements are stringent, and in some respects not entirely applicable to Florida, as the state has been arguing, and those requirements would have significantly raised the bill.

But, as correspondence from FEMA and Craig Fugate, the state's emergency manager makes clear, the requirements for federal certification, meaning federal grant dollars, has been the same the entire decade.

FEMA doesn't fund any project that has not been approved prior to construction, let alone already built. FEMA never indicated it would fund the shelter and initially received an incomplete application from the state.

The county was even turned down to retrofit the shelter - this after the plans have been tweaked and tweaked repeatedly from the county to state level, costing taxpayers in construction delays - since the state had notified all counties that new construction on shelters had to adhere to FEMA guidelines.

And while FEMA's requirements would have raised the roof on the price, it would have also paid for 75 percent of the shelter if completed according to government specifications.

In short, the county appears to have rushed from drawing board to building when it was unnecessary - this shelter has been in the pipeline as long as the hospital and came after the construction of the adjacent park - and doing so cost taxpayers money - at least $337,000 - and placed quotation marks on either side of "storm shelter."

This raises a central question for taxpayers - would that $337,000 and the interest that will ultimately be paid, been better spent in other ways?

Such as, taking a wild stab here, building the complex for consolidation?

Or actually making real economic development more of than a hobby, taking better care of seniors or even, inhale taxpayers, putting some of that money back in people's pockets.

The difference in how that $337,000 will be spent and how it should be is the exact difference between county-wide government and single-member districts.