Budget Problems

Our beloved, freewheeling, fast spending county commissioners didn’t need the auditing firm of Potter & Company to tell them, yesterday, they are getting themselves between a rock and a hard place with their general fund budget and your tax dollars. They already knew it. They were told the county's "undesignated fund balance(meaning monies they aren't obligated to spend) has slowly dipped to a, not so good, 18% (of our annual general fund obligations).


And, EOD remembers a few years ago when our commissioners were vowing to keep this percentage around 28%; and, then it was 25%, etc.. But, that was just before the big spending spree began and tens-of-millions of dollars in debt began accumulating. Large, extravagant schools, Taj Mahal courthouses, and Cadillac administration buildings, commissioner annexes, community centers, satellite office buildings, real estate for dog parks and swimming pools, etc. will do that to anyone's bank account.


It all reminds us of a fool buying a Rolls Royce and then discovering, after one payment, he can't afford to keep it. However, our county commissioners aren't fools; they'll just raise our taxes when our new lawyer/county manager tells them the finance office can't balance the budget.


And, ahhh, weren’t times great back a couple of years ago? Our communities stopped their quarreling over who would get the biggest new schools, because everybody got one. And, we rewarded our commissioners, the county manager, their spouses and a few others with a trip to Hawaii (national conference); and, ended it all up by letting them build themselves a spanking new, unneeded, Commissioners Meeting Annex, complete with fancy countertops, new leather chairs and a state-of- the-art sound system (that still doesn't work well).


And, all the while, there's a small problem lurking close by, folks; and it’s nipping at the butts of Chairman Judge and Commissioners Johnson & Johnson, Tillett, Burrus, Shea and Dutton as they sit in those soft leather chairs. Fact is, they just may be in need of a good dose of flea powder to get them through it all. We’ll talk about it tomorrow.

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