Sum of its Parts

We are better together than we are alone.

Paraphrasing a bit, that statement from the dedication and blessing of a new hospital seems appropriate in a broader context.

We will move forward better as a county when the divisions of single-member districts are eradicated.

The most recent budget wrangling by the Board of County Commissioners is a case in point.

Commissioners have taken the tired approach of mandating across-the-board cuts from all departments, mandating that the monetary equivalent of weeklong furloughs for all employees of the county and cutting positions.

But spending did not go up during the halcyon days of the early 2000s and the workforce was not bloated in equal proportions within the offices of all departments and constitutional officers.

It was out of control but most of that increase in workforce was that which came under the umbrella, and ultimate jurisdiction, of the county commission, which also approves all county budgets.

These increases were fueled by a mentality that what was good for one was good for five and don’t think twice about the waste because look at what the golden goose is laying. Some commissioners were simply better spenders than others.

Therefore across-the-board cuts in spending are the equivalent of robbing Peter to pay Paul.

Further, the initial positions cut were three to equal some $175,000 in salary, or roughly $60,000 a year or some $20,000 more than the average income in Gulf County under census-type numbers that are likely out of date.

The county is shedding some of its most senior employees – a strange approach to job-cutting – or the county pay scale is as out of whack as county spending.

Consider it this way, there are thousands of people in this county, and we would dare assert not just a few small businesses, which would like to take home $60,000 in this or any year in the immediate future.

 The problem is that commissioners have made a mess from which they are having a difficult time deodorizing themselves. Budgeting has never been a problem when the revenue coming in was at least equal to what commissioners wanted to be sending out.

Figuring it out from the other side is the tough nut and it is easily argued that the county is about two years behind the private sector in owning up to the day of reckoning which long ago announced its arrival.

Commissioners have only tightened spending when forced by the state or the drop in property values.

They are struggling to do so now, no real surprise considering one triumph the commission touts is a work order system that required five years from first discussed to full implementation.

And in this environment that impacts not just the county but the state and country right now, artificial political divisions are not constructive.

Voters are shut out of the discussion in Gulf County.

This year two of the county commissioners will be up for re-election and only voters in their districts will vote and only on the commissioner in their district. Notice the “theirs” there.

Each voter of this county has just one of five seats at the table as difficult decisions are made that will impact coming months and years.

That is if a voter is to believe that his or her commissioner will vote 1) the way the voter wants them to or 2) the commissioner votes in a manner based on how he campaigned and 3) 1+2 equals the common good of the county.

That is the real shame of county government, the real affront to the sensibilities to which we attribute our pledge and singing of the National Anthem – it is not representative government.

We are divisible. Each voter in this county is really one-fifth a voter, at least as far as the local voting laws pertain.

And no matter how one dresses this concoction up it is simply wrong.

Because we are all trying to hold on, together, in this turbulence of today.

The ties that bind extend from Port St. Joe to Wewahitchka to Dalkeith to Howard Creek to White City to the Beaches to Beacon Hill. When one speaks about the pride and the beauty of this community, geographic boundaries are county, not municipal, ones.

The train leaves the track though when one voter can only cast a single vote for a five-member commission.

Commissioner Nathan Peters, Jr. should save the county time and money with one stroke of the pen by erasing the federal decree that saddles the county with single-member districts with the pledge that his action will not impact this year’s election, during which he is running.

If litigation is required, the guess here given precedence from counties in the region is that it would not be a huge undertaking and commissioners have an odd approach to spending public money on legal fights anyway, so why not take a flyer on something that the people – all eligible voters in the county – decided six years ago.

But get on with it, beginning with the 2012 elections.

Time for commissioners to stop neutering every vote in the county before it is cast by rendering it one-fifth a vote.

Time to stop denying what a significant percentage of those outside the commission meeting room seem to understand, or at least believe – that the county’s future would be brighter by having an actual government that represented them, all of them.

Time to end “my people” and “my district” and, to borrow a sports euphemism, make it “we” instead of “I.”

We are better together than we are alone.