Monday’s council meeting was very constructive in that it served to highlight Council’s continued refusal to listen. Their “ostrich” approach is the nexus behind the fact that the only real progress made this past 19 months was due to the previous administration.
Even the meeting venue at the new county administration building served to remind us that previous regime set this new regime up with a well-progressing and relative low cost municipal showcase, but this council ignored pleas and tried to very expensively cancel the iron clad building contract well into construction.
Of course, those wasted efforts only manifested costly delays.
We have, also, now paid a dear price in human and monetary costs due to the low employee morale and costly high turnover for the last 15 months despite continued urgings by citizens and two council members – Douglas Pauley and Clarence Gilbert – to take care of the employees.
Since the budget meetings began last April, council leadership insisted the well was dry. But citizens knew otherwise.
Monday, the ‘Election Miracle,’ the sudden discovery of money to fund long overdue employee raises, moved forward – just in time for the election. What a coincidence.
This discovery comes after 15 months of calling for higher wages for employees, adequately staffed first responder departments and record numbers of employees exiting the county’s employ.
Monday proved again, that a lot of short and long term pain could have been avoided if only council had listened and acted 15 months and two budgets ago. Now we can’t get those experienced and well-trained employees back. They are lost to us.
It appears, however, there will not be a miracle for total employee care as the March employee survey results were received and finalized in August, but the county leadership refuses to make them public. The surveys have been buried behind an almost three-month smoke screen of ‘legal reviews’ and other cockamamy delays. How many more employees will we lose before county leadership listens and addresses our government’s glaring human resource shortfall?
Yes, for good measure, council on Monday threw in their usual public hearing topic without listing any meaningful details. I get it, affording no details prevents citizens from offering helpful suggestions and alternatives to the public hearing proposal.
Those watching the meeting broadcast at home were unable to offer input either, as the comment buttons have been removed from council’s YouTube broadcasts.