History Lesson

"We can't keep doing business as we have in the past."

 Such a statement has been made at least once in the past six months in both a Port St. Joe city commission and Board of County Commissioners meeting.

A good start would be with both the county and city hiring a financial officer.

Yes, the county has a financial officer, but the Clerk of Courts has a limited to zero role in establishing spending policy and setting priorities.

The clerk even has their budget approved by the county commissioners.

And a budget committee has done a solid task this year of trying to determine areas where the county could cut spending and, unfortunately, alternative revenue streams, but the expertise there is limited when it comes to crunching the numbers.

There are difficult budgeting times ahead for the county and city, there is no question about that as the county's largest current private employer will close up shop this summer.

The impact to the city in water use is one obvious and immediate impact just as the city brings new water plant online.

A new port, a new hospital, some tremors of activity in the real estate market represent positives, but property values will drop and public revenue will in turn fall.

Combine that with a lack of confidence in public officials and that is a toxic mix.

There is also a fundamental lack of trust between city and county, evidenced by back and forth over road and sewer bond money.

There are unseemly divisions, exhibit one being the months of tortuous machinations surrounding the city manager and his role with the city commission, on both boards.

And there is a perception, fed by the volume of debate and frequent vitriol that has accompanied any discussion of the coming budget year and the gloomy numbers commissioners are looking at after nearly a decade of sunny times that commissioners are over their heads as economic times toughen.

 The reality is that neither body has in place an individual who can give them solid financial advice and direction based on a thorough understanding of the financial condition of the county or city.

The county commission, or at least a portion of the board, has fought the concept for years, since at least 2004 when Commissioner Bill Williams urged commissioners to hire a financial officer.

The request was doomed to failure, because to hire a financial officer would be to cede control, to let someone peek inside the fiefdoms, which is to excise power from commissioners' base.

As long as there is no county-wide voting, in fact, a financial officer is almost counter-intuitive.

Government is really about the money, particularly local government.

An individual providing a long, broad view of the county's economic picture runs against the grain of a system that has for over 20 years rewarded those who think small, whose policies and leadership rarely extend beyond district lines, and who rely on the lack of transparency the system innately breeds.

There is no finer example than the commission chair's sudden push, even if it means a rise in the millage rate, for a technology employee to bring all county departments' operating systems efficiently on to a common platform.

A financial officer would have been able to point out long ago that the county, for economic efficiency, needed to bring commonality to every department's system.

This is simply part of that work-order dodge commissioners have perfected.

The city has no such excuse. Commissioners are elected - a breath of fresh air inserted here - citywide, not by districts.

But the city has itself in a fix because there are so many infrastructure projects underway at one time that, as one commissioner said during a recent special meeting, a room full of CPAs might not be able to sort out the lot.

At the core of all this Weston mess is the financial state of the city.

Nobody knows it. Nobody knows all the numbers.

Decisions are being made with an eye-patch on because all the numbers are not clear, as was pointed out during a special meeting two weeks ago.

What sort of government does that? Only in Gulf County.

      The county and city should hire financial officers. Share one in these difficult economic times, if need be.

      The expiration date on the old days of doing business has long since elapsed. Maybe the county operated well in another era with one or two or handful of people calling the shots, maybe the city did as well.

      But this is a new century with new demands and the old way of doing business is not going to cut it anymore, or put another way, the taxpayers footing the bill can no longer afford the old way of business.