MOMMY WHAT ARE PRINCE AND REX DOING?

MOMMY WHAT ARE PRINCE AND REX DOING? With the news of the California Supreme Court’s decision yesterday to recognize the civil rights of same sex couples to marry in that state has come some local discussion of how we can reverse the shameful denial of that right embedded in the Hawai`i Constitution and State law.

Today Larry Geller at the pre-eminent Disappeared News brings up the fact that it was actually the Legislature that enacted the ban whereas the Constitutional amendment passed by bigoted religious zealots led by now State Senator Mike Gabbard merely enabled the legelature to do it.

Geller says “given today's decision in California, shouldn't we begin to re-think our own discrimination and whether it is time to undo it? No ConCon is needed, just a great big campaign to convince our legislators to do the right thing.”

And in an extensive essay on the issue “In the Line of Fire”, an occasional, anonymous, self-described “attorney” who blogs at MauiTalk - which, though a bit windy, is always a good read- goes further in wanting the states to get out of the business of marrying people altogether as many have advocated, questioning the state’s interest in validating the so-called institution.

Both contain information that people may or may not know but the biggest secret is one that no one, from Wolf Blitzer to Katy Couric, is talking about is that none of the states that claim to “ban same sex marriage” actually do so- and they can’t do it.

The laws on the books in the various states actually ban that individual state from marrying people of the same gender. But while that act is banned, the state of being married in the state is not stated.

In other words anyone married in California- or Massachusetts, the other state that marries people of the same gender- is married no matter which state they are in.

And the U.S. Constitution insures that no state can ban the state of being married to someone who was married in another state.

Article IX says:

Section 1. Full faith and credit shall be given in each state
to the public acts, records, and judicial proceedings of every other state. And
the Congress may by general laws prescribe the manner in which such acts,
records, and proceedings shall be proved, and the effect thereof.
Section 2.
The citizens of each state shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of
citizens in the several states.

Pretty damn clear. That’s why proponents of a ban have tried to gin up support for a US Constitutional amendment- they’ve seen Sect IX and know what it would take to overturn it.

No one who was married in Las Vegas has ever been told their marriage isn’t valid in another state no matter what the other state’s laws for getting married are. Watch any old movie and you’ll see people in the east going to marry in Maryland- or Marryland as many called it- because there were no blood tests or waiting periods like there were and still are in some states... like Massachusetts. And why mixed race couples went north to exercise their rights.

In California all you need is ID, two human beings and the fee and once you get the license you allowed to BE married in every state even though you actually GOT married in California.

It would be nice if our State woke up and shed it’s image as a bunch of backward religious nuts, our bluest of the blue states reputation notwithstanding. But for anyone in Hawai`i who wants to marry someone when Hawai`i says “can not”, guess what? Can.

And there ain’t thing-one the Church Lady can do about it.

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McGRUFF’S MARAUDERS: Did the headline writer for today’s local paper really “not know” when writing the one that said “Green harvest benefits Salvation Army’s kitchen”?

Maybe it’s for the medical patients who are seeking a toke or two of salvation. Maybe that’s what Brando saw in the “Mission Doll”. We’ve heard they’ve got a great drug program.

So go down and get your pakalolo brownies and marijuana marinara before Chief Perry finds out. Maybe he and his newly armed-to-the-teeth force were too busy to notice what with the apparent SWAT team that took over Black Pot Beach Park in Hanalei yesterday to make sure those evil terrorist fishermen couldn’t keep their fishing gear and suicide-bombs in an old Matson container that had been there for many years. Glad to hear that our cops could take some time out from giving dog-off-the-leash tickets for a few hours to take care of such insidious criminal enterprises.

ORDERED STEAK; GOT GENERIC DRIED DOGFOOD

ORDERED STEAK; GOT GENERIC DRIED DOGFOOD: Budget deadline routinely bring out the free-lunch crowd as the local letters to the editor column has shown lately.

Another day, another dippy “give up back the money” epistle, usually from someone who has also complained about the lack of services the County provides.

But the broad brush crowd always seems to have a blind eye to what we actually spend the money on and apparently doesn’t mind when their money goes down the rat hole of the cronyism-dole and various and sundry Incumbency Protection Plans- the only things that the Mayor and Council seem to be good at providing

The “extra” $2.2 million supplemental appropriations reported yesterday in the local paper has a couple of examples. But digging in the regular budget yields dozens of boondoggles and inflated prices and overpayments to the revolving door of the Public Works Department’s Employees, Ex-employees and Future Employees’ Benevolent Fund, such as triple-priced bridges and paying more for less asphalt.

And there’s always financial room for Jell-O research, causing the administration to get hand cramps writing up all those make-work programs and signing blank checks for poor, starving outside consultants and attorneys.

One of the most amusing ways to spend the “extra” money is the new re-inflation of the now $350,000 pay-off-to-Kekaha appropriation for- well for no one seems to know what for, but I’m sure my good friend Bruce Pleas will figure out something ... maybe malasadas and manapua for all.

Now no one wants a dump, GMO seed experiments and rocket launching facilities in their neighborhood except those making money from them. And Kekaha has more than it’s share of environmental disasters waiting to happen or already occurring.

But what area doesn’t deserve a break. The North Shore has to put up with losing their very neighborhoods to vacation rentals due to the County’s lack of enforcement and boneheaded, dumb-growth planning policies that created them.

Kapa`a has to literally pay double for gas to get though traffic that was created by the County with it’s famous lack of foresight and resulting infrastructure when it zoned everything for resorts and then didn’t expect them to be built. Koloa? Maybe we should buy them some trees. Po`ipu? Well forget Po`ipu- does anyone actually live there anymore... or should we say any voters? Koke`e? How much is appropriated to pay all of us when the state takes away our playground and hands it over to the tourists with gates and carnival-like concessions at every turn?

Well it just might be that the Kekaha community- one of the towns that votes overwhelmingly to return incumbents to office every other year- is rightly pissed at the Council and guess what? In Kekaha they vote in greater numbers than the rest of us. A third of a million dollars greases an awful lot of electoral skids.

Another supplemental absurdity is $850,000 for another Lihu`e Development Plan aka the Grove Farm Memorial Protection Bill. Since half the appointed faces and government contractors have ties to old Massah GF, let’s see how we can squeeze in a little more development of their Lihu`e lands. The $850,000 for the third try at a plan (because twice was not enough) while other town and area plans are not only non-existent but many have had money appropriated for them that’s still sitting in the Planning Department unspent... along with a half a dozen other consulting projects that any normally brain-powered Planning Department would be doing internally instead of awarding them to ex-planners who opened businesses to suck ’em up at the tap of the County tavern.

Over the years we’ve heard a lot of the “lower my taxes but fix the potholes” nincompoops rants like “I’m a social liberal but a fiscal conservative”. Well what does that mean? It means you’re either a fool or a crook who wants stuff from the government but doesn’t want to- or thinks you should have to- pay for it.

The same of course goes for the people who say there are too many government laws and regulations... but don’t get them going because each one can think of at least one more issue for which “there oughtta be a law”.

One man’s red tape is another’s protection of their rights to a safe and healthful community and environment. The problem is not too many laws it’s having ineffectual laws with no teeth to regulate those who think the world owes them a living even if it means turning everyone else’s surroundings into a pig pen or a slave plantation.

If anything we need to spend more and spend it on the things that will benefit all of us and repay us a hundred times over like better roads, public transit, better police and fire protection, restrictions on land use and enforcement of land rape law- and that’s just from the County.

The State needs more money to raise the salaries of teachers, lower the numbers of kids in each class, fix the schools we have and build more or them. But I’d like to see the parents- all of whom want these things- who say “yes- tax me enough to pay for what I want”. Health Care? Crumbling infrastructure? Buying land for open space, parks and cultural and historical protection?

We all want all of those things. We hear a chorus of cheers for each one. But ask “who wants to pay for them” and everyone looks at their shoes and shuffles away.

The little red hen gets no answer when she asks “who will help me... plant and harvest the wheat, gather the fuel and build the fire, mix the ingredients and bake the cookies?” But you can bet they’ll all come around trampling each other when she asks “who will help me eat theses wonderful cookies?. They can’t imagine why they should be asked to pay for them.

Yes folks you heard it here- strike up the band for bigger government and higher taxes.

And people ask why this petulant pup doesn’t run for office...

WHAT’S THAT SMELL AND WHERE’S THAT BONE I BURIED?:

WHAT’S THAT SMELL AND WHERE’S THAT BONE I BURIED?: It’s always amusing to see the bizarre ramblings of the “anything goes” property-rights nut-cases like Randy Weir, “Doc” Smith and the deluded anonymous sycophantic trolls who live under Charley Forster’s Planet Kaua`i blog.

In lending bandwidth and a sympathetic ear Charley has been known to promote a couple of quick-buck corporate attorneys and an out-to-lunch UH law professor trying to represent the constitutional right to be compensated for government-taken property as a right to put up a hotel or industrial factory anywhere a land-owner’s greedy little heart desires.

The problem is that these never-ever-land Brainiacas- who have apparently never heard of zoning, public nuisances and the rights of the community as a whole to tell you what you can and can’t do with your land- are actually encouraging others jump off the cliff with them.

And so, apparently acting on the precepts of this Church of Our Lady of the Presumptuous Assumptions, a group opened their very own low-cost, toxic-waste dump on 10 acres of land in Nanakuli on O`ahu.

When they hear these libertarian land-use arguments people who actually live in a community rather than a bunker often joke “what, you like open a dump next door?”. But no joking. According to a Honolulu newspaper article these people actually did just that.

“Agents from the Environmental Protection Agency's Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance served a search warrant on the lessee of the property” says the Honolulu Advertiser. “(US Attorney Ed) Kubo said officials are looking for 55-gallon drums containing chemicals along with large amounts of gasoline, hundreds of gallons of waste oil, hundreds of tires, a large number of thrown-away car batteries — still containing acid — and used automobile antifreeze liquid containing lead.

“The holes in which they are believed buried are very deep, ‘which shows a calculated attempt to hide (the items),’ Kubo said.”

The Star-Bulletin added “Kubo said: ‘It is alleged that companies would pay money to the lessee of the property to allow them to dump their waste into holes on the property.’”

Now there’s your property-rights free-market in action. It must warm the cockles of these sophomoric pranksters’ alleged hearts with pride to see someone actually do what they have been double-dog-daring them to do.

Certainly they’ll all be contributing to the defense fund for these pigs and get their lawyer buddies to defend them- unless of course they don’t believe in their own rhetoric which is apparently the case for most of these denizens of the Blog-Of-The-Unknown-Commenter who regularly leaves those flaming bag of crap on the doorstep, run away and expect others to stomp them out.

Clarification and Correction
Robert H. Thomas whom we referred to as “an out to lunch UH law professor” is not a UH law professor and does not teach law at UH although he did attend law school there and has published through UH. Thomas' nutty ideas are available at the InverseCondemnation web site. We were not referring to Professor Jon Van Dyke in this specific reference. We regret the error and any confusion it may have caused.

ANOTHER YANK ON THE CHOKE CHAIN

ANOTHER YANK ON THE CHOKE CHAIN: The Kekahu Foundation which governs “Community” radio station KKCR is once again demonstrating their distain for community involvement by forming an insular committee to develop a “strategic plan” for the future of the station, starting with secret close meetings.

The public is not welcome to the meeting tomorrow (Wed 5/14/08) where only members of the Board of Directors (BOD), staff and some members of the station’s federally mandated Community Advisory Board (CAB) will meet as a Committee of the Board to chart out the future of the station. No members of the general public are on the committee.

The development of some kind of new “plan” for the station has come about amidst, and according to many ay KKCR as a result of, intense community criticism of the cliquish club of connected Caucasians, specifically for their autocratic, secretive, self-dealing style under a self-appointed board of directors and arbitrary and capricious decision-making by a staff that has, according to dozens of insiders, abused their positions in programming and disciplinary actions.

In our recent Investigative Report: KKCR A Study in Brown and White, PNN detailed charges of operating and perpetuating a racist organization that routinely keeps the community at a distance and discourages local public affairs programming, which are occasional and over which the staff keeps a tight reign insuring, with rare hard fought for exceptions, mostly non-controversial content... keeping their advertisers, whom they call underwriters, very happy.

None of these issues raised in the 21-page report or the extensive 63-page documentation file have been addressed except in small, incremental, perhaps intentionally-ineffective measures, such as allowing paying subscribers to vote for one board member only as an “experiment”.

As the article states, a “programming” committee is being formed by “staff”, which has been controlling programming all along to the embitterment of a broad cross-section of the community served by the so-called community radio station

And now the promised “reform”- the development of a “strategic plan” that was supposed to explore ways to diversify the almost all white board, staff and programmers and involve the community- the meetings of the group, which not only does not include any outsiders, aren’t even open to the public much less do they take the community’s input on the plan before they meet, although there are plans to include some public input once the committee meets twice secretly, presumably to design the plan.

This “decision-making first, public input later” has been a hallmark of the Kekahu Foundation’s BOD’s meetings for about 10 years now, where the public is routinely cut off mid-sentence and verbally attacked while speaking to the board. And that’s if anyone on the BOD stays to hear what they have to say because the public comment section of the meeting- over which a battle was hard-fought to even allow it- comes after the meeting adjourns.

The secret meetings appear be a violation of the Kekahu Foundations own bylaws. The provisions for open meetings are reproduced below. Violations of the by-laws may also endanger KKCR’s yearly Corporation for Public Broadcasting grants.

Although some dissidents on the BOD and CAB claim the Board’s “Strategic Planning Committee” is a “step in the right direction” it is unclear how the same board and staff who are at the root of the acknowledged deficient system created when the vote for the Board was stolen in 1996 when they set up the advertiser driven, music industry tool that KKCR is today, would be expected to do anything but abuse their authority once again by developing a plan to consolidate their power under the guise of involving the community.

The secret closed meeting is scheduled to take place tomorrow, Wednesday, from 5-7 at the Hanalei Bay Resort.

Kekahu Foundation By-Laws:
Sect 4.8(g) Open Meetings. With the exceptions stated herein, the Board of Directors and its committees shall hold open meetings preceded by reasonable notice to the public. However, the Board or its committees may hold closed meetings or sessions to consider matters relating to personnel matters, individual employees, proprietary information, litigation, and other matters requiring the confidential advise of counsel, commercial or financial information obtained from a person on a privileged or confidential basis, or the purchase of property or services whenever the premature exposure of such purchase would compromise the business interests of the Corporation. The Executive Committee may also act by polling its members. If any such meeting is closed pursuant to this provision, the reasons for doing so shall be stated in the Board or committee minutes and, if reasonably possible, in the notice of the meeting.

AND WHEN I WAS DONE HE PICKED IT UP AND PUT IT IN A BAG

AND WHEN I WAS DONE HE PICKED IT UP AND PUT IT IN A BAG: Despite the lack of any required official provisions designating the coastal bike path as a “county park” the County is apparently ignoring the law and, according to an article by Nathan Eagle in the local paper it “considered a linear park and as such falls under a county ordinance banning animals without permits.”

The article states that “(a)fter a verbal warning process ended in March, the Kaua`i Police Department started issuing citations to owners walking their dogs on the multi-use path.”

It does not say what the outcome of these cases were or even if anyone challenged the citations, as many dog owners promised to do when we detailed the actual law in this space on March 3. We further elicited a promise from councilman Mel Rapozo on March 20 to determine, through the County Attorney, what the law is and how it pertains to the bike path and report back to us, saying “(a)s far as the park question, I can only tell you what we are told by the County Attorney. I have asked for a clarification on this concern, and will post the answer when I receive it".

Our research showed, as we said over two months ago:
The Kaua`i County Charter provides that “(e)very legislative act of the council shall be by ordinance except as otherwise provided”. which is now done now by amending the CZO (unavailable on-line) where “parks” are designated.It also says “The Council also makes all decisions on acquiring land”. And 4.04 says “ No ordinance shall be amended, revised or repealed by the council except by ordinance. No resolution shall be amended, revised or repealed except by resolution, but a resolution may be superseded by a subsequent ordinance”There has never been an ordinance or resolution making even any part of the Bike-Path a county parkAdministratively, the Charter’s 23.09 say that “unless otherwise authorized by law, all rules and regulations ... must first be approved by the mayor prior to going into effect”. The County has not reported public action declaring the bike path a park.
We have not heard anything yet but now, not only have County’s mayor and Council ignored the apparent lack of any legal provisions designating the “bike path” in general a park (where it doesn’t cut through an already designated park such as the Lydgate area) but they are set to compound the blatant disregard of our laws they are sworn to uphold by basing new bills on the existing flaws the County has promulgated.

Though we have asked Eagle to identify who told him they “considered” the path a park or what that means we haven’t gotten an answer to that question.

As we detailed previously, this is most likely another one of those “because I say so” laws that are a remnant of plantation mentality that still has it’s grip on the psyches of Council Chair Kaipo Asing, Mayor Bryan Baptiste and his protégé Bernard Carvalho, the newly deigned head of the Department of Parks and Recreation which many claim was created just to give him a job.

The bike path itself is a bright shining symbol of what many have publicly characterized as the “Fire, Ready, Aim” way of doing things on Kaua`i, especially in the Department of Public Works where the orders of the day routinely include facilitating the gravy-train revolving-door of corruption that costs millions in inflated contracts, a corrupt nepotism-riddled team of inspectors and, many have publicly alleged, kickbacks.

Even though the money for the path required a still non-existent sign-off by the Secretary of the US Department of Transportation that it is indeed not just a bike path but a bike path to be used strictly for transportation and not for recreation, the county has designated it a “mutli-use” path and wants to allow not just every imaginable human and mechanical obstacle to bicycling now they’re adding non-human impediments.

Maybe pet turtles will be next- or pet cockroaches... after all, they need somewhere to exercise. Can we bring our pet llama? What if it’s on a leash? Maybe you goldfish will enjoy the ocean view- bring ‘em on down

Hey, don’t give me a ticket officer- that’s not my chicken... it lives here.”

It’s no wonder the rest of the state shakes it head and repeats the mantra “only on Kaua`i”, the phrase universally used to describe the abject paternalism, authoritarianism and lack rhyme or reason in decision-making that has yielded a top-to-bottom corrupt modus operandi in the executive and legislative branches of so-called democratic governance here at the very end of human occupation (take it either way) of the island chain.
A separate kingdom indeed.

NEVER PROPERLY WEANED

NEVER PROPERLY WEANED:

M is for the many times she told us
O is for the other times she told us
T is for the thousand times she told us
H is for the hundred times she told us
E is for every times she told us
R is for the repetitiveness of what she told us
Put them all together they spell MOTHER
The reason this son-of-a-bitch is always mouthing off today.

PAVLOVIAN PANDERING

PAVLOVIAN PANDERING: There’s so much contained between the lines of the article in the local paper today about a supposed “2.2M surplus” the headline touts it’s hard to know where to focus.

But the theme of the yearly ritualistic conspiracy of misdirection by the Council and the Mayor is the same- shove the costs of neglecting what we already own down the road and spread around enough cash to corporate and special interest to open the spigot to fill your campaign coffers.

Yes it’s an election year and according to the article:

“The mayor proposes using this increased funding (the $2.2M) in part for an $850,000 Lihu`e Development Plan, $150,000 for community gardens, $350,000 for veterans cemetery upgrades and $100,000 in host community benefits for Kekaha (and) $14,000 in additional support for the Civil Air Patrol”

But what most don’t understand is that in addition to the $158 million in the operating budget, we are about to be again indebted- for future Councils to pay back - another $65.2 million in the Capital Improvement Budget (CIP) which we are going to “borrow” through yet another “bond issue” in 2009.

For those who don’t get it, this is money to buy new stuff that will become a fixed pay-back amount in the budget every year- the part that causes us to wonder if we can afford a third of a million dollars for cemetery upkeep and development plans that have been done twice and are collecting shelf dust.

And while we’re buying all this new crap we don’t have money to take care of our old crap because we’re paying off the money we borrowed years ago to buy it.

It’s like borrowing money for a car and then neglecting to change the oil and keep it tuned up because you don’t have the money for maintenance because you’re paying off the loan. Then you have to buy a new car before you’re done paying for the old car because you didn’t maintain it and so it blew up.

Take for example our roads as Glenn Mickens and others have been for years- literally “taking” pieces of them to the Council Chambers- to show how the lack of a program of consistent and cyclical maintenance is costing us many times what it would cost us to maintain them when they get in such bad shape we have to rebuild the road instead of just repaving it.

Despite recognition of this problem from every single councilmember over the past 15 years and promises to fix the system, catch up with standard best practices for maintenance and then institute a program that will repave each mile of county road when it’s appropriate (instead of doing the road the Mayor lives on every year during this and the last administration) we are even farther behind than we were a few years back.

Our parks are a mess- the bathrooms are filthy and broken, the ball fields ill-designed and barely maintained and there’s no or very little money to take care of what we have now. But the upcoming CIP-project-related bond-issue according to the article, calls for more “playground equipment, roller hockey rink covering, skateboard parks and soccer fields” among other things.

This was one of Mickens and the “nit-pickers” main argument against the “bike-path” purchase as well as other nice-to-have-but-are-they-a-need-or-a-want projects- where is the money to maintain them coming from?

We now have wound up with, not just a ribbon of concrete where it’s likely the ocean will be in a decade or two at present erosion rates, but things like new supposed “parks” complete with “comfort stations and pavilions... all of which lack the additional appropriations for even cleaning much less preventive maintenance.

Yet every year we hear from well meaning citizens complaining about the amount we’re spending not considering what we’re wasting by not spending now, much less how we are accomplishing that spending.

Take citizen advocate Fred Well’s letter to the editor this week. He complains about spending in general and wants the budget cut, just as he did last year and the year before . But Fred is a smart-growth advocate and a smart knowledgeable guy who used to be a city manager on the mainland. Proposals he has made and backs will cost money in terms of more personnel in the Planning Department if we are to use smart-growth principles instead of the developer-initiated dumb-growth we use now. It takes money to properly gauge and analyze and accommodate the community’s pulse on both general and specific development projects. Is that the area Fred wants cut?

This is not to pick on Fred, a person that is more community minded than most of us. But the mindless “cut the budget” cries that we hear every May aren’t the mindful type of criticisms that need to be expressed to our lawmakers and administrators, no matter how the system is set up.

It’s doubtful this kind of “inside baseball” will be on the agenda when the elections approach this fall. Instead the newspaper will ask the candidates bland open ended fluff questions that leave all the wiggle room in the world on questions that will make no difference.

With an election approaching, in his blog today Mel Rapozo seems to jump on the mindless “cut the budget” pandering bandwagon with some comments that show how little he really understands what he is doing- or is ignoring it.

He says:

• I feel that we have over budgeted again. I believe that this proposed budget, which simply adds on to the current budget, will generate another huge surplus next year, which is not fiscally responsible.
  
  We did have some things to say in his comments section which we’ll get to in a minute.
  
  Mel doesn’t get into any of the issues we presented here but does bring up things regarding some intricacies such as unfilled personnel positions and their effect on the “surplus”. He suggests “dollar-funding” unfilled positions and apparently using that to “cut taxes”. He doesn’t say where the money could come from when and if those positions are filled if he returned the “surplus” created and doesn’t deny those positions need to be filled to provide essential services.
  
  Unfilled positions is a problem but his solution just plain doesn’t make sense. It reeks of election year pandering.
  
  He also shows his apparent ignorance of the process- or again his turning a blind eye- with a few comments such as these two bullet points.
  
  Require the Administration to obtain Council approval if approved funding is used for purposes other than what was justified in the budget process.
  
  Require the Administration to obtain Council approval whenever positions are reallocated or transferred between departments.
  

We urge you to read what he says, noting his misperceptions about many things and his conclusion that his fixes would provide “tax relief”

To be fair, it’s certainly a positive trait that Mel has set up a place for exposition of his ideas, leaving himself open to our tirades in opposition or corrections. The tendency of more pols to hide their hands is despicable and telling in identifying why most of us see most of them as crooks and crocks.

But that said, here’s what we said addressing Mel’s post:

Your third and fourth bullet points are already the case Mel as I understand the line item budget process. I’m assuming Ricky W(antenabe) can fill you in on why- he did for me when the Council pulled the plug on program based budgeting during the Kusaka administration. If Department heads are not doing this then their financial shenanigans should be subject to discipline from the Finance Director and it should be apparent in the fiscal audit.

The problem is that I have rarely if ever seen debate, just reading and approval, on most of these communications for approval to shift funds unless on of the councilmembers flags it or more often a member of the public brings it up. Perhaps they are coming before you but you don’t realize what you are approving.

As to filling positions, this needs to be a subject of a performance audit under Charter 3.17. Every Department says there are “no qualified applicants” and blames Human Resources but within each department are dozens of serial “89-day contract” non-civil service employees who are dong the jobs already and would love to go “on the books” and get a civil service position. Is it cronyism? Is it some kind of financial kickback scheme? Is it racism, as some have claimed? Is it simply incompetence of department heads?

I don’t know but until we get to the bottom of why these vacancies persist we will never get the bang for our buck in providing essential services. Perhaps taking out many of the discretionary provisions in the budget ordnance are in order, changing those “mays” to shalls” would help.

All in all I think you’re making the same mistake all pols make- looking at the pot of money as this year’s pot, getting stingy and penny-wise-pound foolish (in an election year of course) and passing that off as frugality, pushing expenses down the road for someone else- maybe a council and mayor in 10 years- to deal with.

If there really is more than is “needed” in the budget we could start with programs that all council members have seen and stated will save money in the long run and catch up on all the deferred maintenance- a promise you made when you first ran for council- such as road paving that is STILL costing us exponentially more in future maintenance than it would cost to catch up and keep the roads maintained in a regular cycle. That was caused by deferring maintenance the same way you are proposing to do again by not funding the full catch up and then saying there is a “surplus”.

Or expanding the bus to keep road costs down- or installing more solar on county facilities. Or fixing some of the waste-treatment facilities before they break down and cause double to cost to fix or replace as has happened twice now.

And for that matter what ever happened to the performance auditor in council services that was appropriated twice but never filled? Rumor had it that there was no one to hire but I don’t remember seeing a solicitation to fill the position. Again we’re back to filling positions but this one you can’t blame on the administration.

I hope you’ll respond in detail to these points Mel.

It’s all a little esoteric to many but if you want to complain about the umpire’s call, you have to know the rules of the game... and watch for that brush-back pitch since it is an election year.