Opinion : Money, money, money...there's more where that's coming from...

I had the Supervisor's meeting playing while working on other news bits for the website yesterday. Kind of like background noise. Nothing much out of the ordinary was on the agend. That is until it was time for the budget hearing.

If you've ever sat in on a budget meeting, it will take all you have to not let your eyes glaze over. So honestly, I was expecting it to be that kind of meeting. And then Jill Marlow, former Benton County Auditor stepped up to the plate. Now, I really don't know Jill, but I do know this, the Board of Supervisors should have stopped, looked, and listened.

For the past 14 years, I've always said about the newspaper, "If they were smart, they would..." and in this case about the Supervisors, I'll say, "If they were smart, they would...recruit Jill to really look into these budgets and advise them." Turn her loose. I mean what's the worst that could happen? We could spend LESS money???

That would be awful. We might get a reputation for taking money seriously or something.

But they didn't. I know, I'm shocked too.

As usual, they took things she said and ignored every single one. Now if Joe Smoe had walked in and given them the same lecture, I would have assumed he didn't know what he was talking about. However, Jill has quite a bit of experience in how the county works, and how it should be budgeting.

Unfortunately, we have three men sitting in chairs who believe that they didn't need her advice and that obviously she was off her rocker when it comes to budgeting. If I had to wager, I'd bet that none of them have ever budgeted. Yes, they may have looked at their checkbook and said, "I can afford to do this today, and we'll do that next week," but have never planned out a year of expenses.

One example that she pointed out was the $45,000 for a computer system in the Human Resources budget. As a gal who uses computers programs and am online nonstop, my jaw dropped. I'm sorry, there isn't ANY computer program worth that much money. The HR Director pointed out that THIS system is special. It keeps track of all applicants and allows them to submit forms online.

How could that be done and save $45,000? Well, I could do that in simple email. Pay me that $45,000 and I'll sort all of that information into little folders for you. But it's government, and government wouldn't do anything that's cheap and efficient. Let alone something that's free for the taxpayer. The HR budget alone added $100,000 for the coming year.

The Supervisors didn't even bat an eye. They didn't flinch. Not even a second thought was given to dropping $100,000 into this office. Why? What is so special about this department? Everyone in the county wants to know the answer to that.

Marlow also pointed out that the Supervisors voted to put a levy on rural residents larger than what they had originally said was allowed, and the Supervisors are cool with that.

She said that she could carve out half a million dollars from the budget and no one would notice. I think she could probably go for a cool million and still we wouldn't notice. Nah, I'd say 1.5M.

But that's where we are folks.

We have three men running the county who didn't want to be bothered by the things that Marlow brought to their attention. Even stating that they weren't going to spend "all day on this." Instead, they did what I didn't think they would do. They ignored every word that she said and voted for their budget.

Why did it surprise me?

I have no idea.

I STILL expect better from them. I expect them to pause and say, "Let's look at that again, and bring Jill in to see if we really did get something wrong here." But nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.

Instead, they took the, "We're smarter than you. Even though we can't explain what this $45,000 computer program is supposed to do, we're all for it!

Even though we are passing a levy that is higher than what we said is allowed, we're going for it, because who's going to stop us?

Not you the lowly taxpayers...even if one of them is a pest who happened to be a former Auditor who knows her stuff. We refuse to pause and take a hot minute to glance over the findings. Nope, we are the rulers of the county and you will go along with this, and we will spend boatloads of YOUR money that shouldn't be spent. Why? Because it's too much work to reconsider some of these findings."

And this folks, is why we have a national deficit that we will never pay.

It's why you don't have extra money to spend locally. These three elected officials REFUSE to take a second and third look at these budgets. They will defend to the death the idea of dropping a cool $100,000 into a department that has done nothing to improve the work environment for the county employees. Yet the Supervisors were too proud to admit that they had some things wrong. Like a $45,000 computer program for electronic documants.

I always thought that if I had this job, I'd be telling these department to CUT their budget by 5% each year. It COULD be done. It should be done. But it will never be done, because no one wants to be the bad guy.

We have three men who refuse to listen to reason. Three who refuse to hit the pause button. I bet between the three of them, they spent less time than Jill Marlow in researching these budgets...or they might know what that $45,000 computer system does.

Like Jill said, that program should fall under the IT department. Their job is well, computer systems, researching them and deciding what is best. So that $45,000 should be shifted to IT, but it won't. And you wonder why? Yeah, so do I. It makes no logical sense.

The Supervisors don't look at the county budget as if it were THEIR money. They look at it as a pot of money that magically appears each year so let's make it rain!

Why wouldn't the goal be to spend less? I have no idea. Why WOULDN'T they take Marlow's advice and cut the HR Department returning it back to the Auditor's office where it was originally? But nope, we are putting out $175,000 this year for one department that could be eliminated. Should be eliminated.

There are some departments REQUIRED by law, HR is not one of them. That's just one clear cut that should be made.

The election can't happen soon enough. For some reason these men aren't being rational and thinking. They aren't pondering. They aren't asking the hard questions. They aren't saying, "No, you can't spend that much."

And that disappoints me. It bothers me. It doesn't make me feel like they really care about the taxpayers.

There's a primary in a little over a month. I hope you consider these things when voting. Let's bring in some new blood. Mix things up. If you've heard candidates brag about what they are going to buy when they get in office, don't vote for them. We have that spending thing down already.

Let's mix it up this year and put new faces in new positions.