Losing Their Heads

Let's call the last two weeks in the life of local government for what it is: the chickens come home to roost.

From the machinations to oust Port St. Joe city manager Charlie Weston to the alpha male struggle at a county commission meeting - again - last week, what taxpayers are seeing is their government in meltdown.

The inability to come to grips with difficult numbers, numbers at the bottom line that have been most unpleasant for too many in the private sector for too long, demonstrates that the rudder is off the boat and leadership has been vacuumed out.

Without getting into specifics of the charges lodged against Mr. Weston, those charges, with one notable exception, center on what could best be described as a personality conflict.

At least Commissioner John Reeves has gone to the trouble of enumerating his charges on paper, outside of that we have vague comments about loss of confidence without a willingness to be specific.

But what it seems to boil down to, as evidenced in a recent budget workshop and the tenor of last week's special meeting concerning the dismissal of Mr. Weston, is an inability to attempt to grasp the issues on the table.

Any citizen who bothered to attend a similar financial workshop in January would attest that the numbers in front of commissioners, bleak as they seem to be, are the same today as they were four months ago.

Citizens can also attest as to pledges about the various infrastructure issues the city has undertaken.

The city water plant was pledged to be paid for by tap fees paid in advance by The St. Joe Company. There would be no increase in water and sewer rates, another pledge.

The Devil's deal the city made with the county commission to run water and sewer throughout the county would not cost taxpayers a dime, bond and appropriation money paying for the whole shebang.

With visions of tax dollars dancing in the heads of commissioners at the time, the city annexed land and pledged infrastructure whose need could be seriously questioned.

As the delinquent tax rolls printed in the paper or any drive along U.S. 98 west of town indicates, those sugar plums of WindMark Beach, Viento Beach and Barefoot Cottages, as the major examples, are hardly dancing, just like the rest of the real estate market.

But current commissioners now chose to expend valuable time trying to rid themselves of a city manager they handed a two-year contract with a bump in salary to just a few months ago instead of tackling the numbers in front of them.

Commissioner Rex Buzzett seems the lone voice of reason on the board as he, rightly, cautions for everyone to step back, take a breath and move forward to the betterment of the city.

Three of his peers should wonder whether what they are doing is for the betterment of the city.

The root of this issue, in truth, predates this board and rewinds several years back to the initial debate over whether the city needed a city manager or not.

Some commissioners have from the outset struggled with the notion of ceding more power, more sway over day-to-day operations and ability to dictate actions in any way, to any individual.

Commissioners have choices to make on two fronts.

They must decide whether they want a city manager and if so, let him do his job. Set policy, establish a course and expect it to be followed, but without the over-the-shoulder eyeballs. Mr. Weston, as well as many taxpayers, is likely still waiting to understand that path, what policies.

Secondly, as Ralph Roberson noted during last week's meeting, commissioners might be having trouble not grasping numbers not because of anything Mr. Weston has done but because nobody is quite sure, for myriad reasons, what the numbers are.

Let the auditors finish their work, report in a public meeting to the commission and take it from there.

The issue for county commissioners is similar while being simpler to understand.

Commissioner Bill Williams, who individually and as a business entity is all over the delinquent tax rolls for a second straight season, can tell his fellow commissioners about what county tax and spending levels of the last decade have wrought.

While his argument will find less purchase with, say, a commissioner who pays not a dime in property tax, it will find plenty of foundation in the private sector.

What commissioners have resorted to, as last week's meeting and a confrontation between Mr. Williams and commission chair Nathan Peters, Jr., evidences, however, is a kind of circling the bowl that is the county's financial picture.

Some of those pledges about no layoffs and no raise in the millage rate now seem laughable if they weren't so painful to taxpayers and the workforce bloated over the years.

And commissioners seem determined to look in any corner for in order to sustain the lifestyle to which they have grown accustomed.

Commissioners are not so much battling with their staff as they seem to be ignoring them about the bigger questions. Addressing the hard issues for commissioners? Not when vague talk and little action will suffice.

As budget season arrives, what is clearly needed is cool heads because right now some commissioners seem to be losing theirs rather than make difficult, painful decisions.