The Russell County Board of Supervisors meeting for August really stunk up the joint. Every single board meeting this year has been dysfunctional and someone needs to get a grasp on what they are doing. This is constantly making board members look bad.
The meeting started off with a report from the county audit. Supervisor Nate Kiser asked for some information on PSA money for trash collection fees. The answer from the auditor was they had no information on that. Wow! Just goes to prove the county does need a complete forensics audit. Kodu’s to Mr. Kiser for asking that question.
A question supervisors and the public has been asking all year long is how much money the county has in reserves. Andrew Hensley tried to put the question to the auditor and he would not give the actual number. Really made it look like the financial report had been scripted with the County Administrator because he would not give the exact number. He stated they were about five weeks ahead and said the answer to how much reserves the county had was 10% of the total expenses for the year. Why could a financial person not just give the dollar amount. I am sure he had that but they were not going to let the public know what the reserve total actually was. County Administrator Lonzo Lester had said in previous meetings we have no reserves. Why is it such a deep dark secret what the total is for the county reserves?
Then we had a speaker that spent time during her update to praise Lou Ann Wallace. I believe supervisors need to be commended when they do something good. But this meeting looked like a propaganda meeting for Lou Ann as a public comment speaker also went on and on about how great a job she was doing.
Are the supervisors or County Administrator Lonzo Lester playing games with the public or does someone not know what they are doing. They had several public hearings if you want to call them that. They opened up public comment on the hearings without reading what the proposed ordinance was. The proper structure for a public hearing is they read the proposed ordinance to the public maybe discuss it then open it up to the public for comment. They would then close the public hearing and discuss and vote on the issue. But not at this meeting they did a public comment on each ordinance without even reading the ordinance and closed the public comment without even having discussion afterwards. They then moved on in the meeting and later came back to the ordinances and discussed then moved on and came back a third time to finally vote on the issues. What are they doing? How can you remember what the public concern was for the issues. The public had no clue what the ordinances actually said at the time of opening the hearing for comment. All I can say is what are you doing?
Then they had public comment where most speakers stayed within the three minute but one was allowed to run way over which is a violation and discrimination.
Cleveland Life Saving Crew Search and Rescue is in need of money and the county helped out but it should be noted that Andrew Hensley made a great point that many of the Churches in the county would donate to things if they were just asked. This is a great point by Andrew because the government should not be in the charity business. The community could help with many needed funds for different needs if they were asked. Cleveland life saving is a different story because that is emergency needs but if some organizations just wants to come in ask for donation instead of trying to raise funds that is where the government should turn them down. In Buchanan County some school groups have been given $5,000 for a trip to Disney. In my school days we had to raise the funds but it is much easier to come ask the Board of Supervisors so that no work needs to be done and our tax dollars just go flying out the window. So. Kudo’s to Andrew for asking them to look for ways to find funding other than the government.
The other big issues was the tourism person had resigned. And the lady from the Chamber of Commerce was asking to let her take back over the tourism responsibilities for the county. A motion was made to let her do just that and that would have cut a position from the county saving around $32,000 for the county. Instead Lou Ann Wallace would not allow that to go through. Lou Ann stated that in some cases grant money would not come if you did not have a certified person in the position. So, that was held up and sent back to the attorney to review. My question is why can they not just give the training and certification to the lady from the Chamber? If you are going to have to hire and train someone why not train her. And if they say she has to be a county employee then make a motion to pay her $1 a year and count her as a county employee. It seems like cutting spending is taboo with this group. They just keep spending while telling us they have no money.
The elderly and disabled discount was approved but it is not clear whether they opened up the deadline to apply. The current deadline was March 1st. The request from public comment was to move the deadline to November a much needed help to our seniors.
There were issues with the Givens School Building and the Cleveland Horse Ring. It appears those issues will be resolved to the satisfaction of most. The school system also returned $200,000 plus to the county. Where this money will be spent is yet to be determined.
This meeting was a disaster if you want anyone to believe they have a firm grasp on what is going on in the county. And a big question looms large over the board as to where over a million dollars in PSA collections on trash went.
You can view the meeting here by clicking the link:
