Contributor: Terri Millard
I don’t know John West or Lily Morgan very well, but I do know there has been conflict between them for years, and I believe this has contributed to the recall. I hope that one day they can resolve their differences, allowing them—and all of us in the community—to move forward.
As someone with a corporate business background, I may view things differently than others. In my opinion, there is tremendous waste in how our county is run. With that in mind, I asked about the types of savings being worked on to improve our poor financial status and came across a few interesting points.
None of this is personal—I know no names—but some numbers don’t add up. Why do we have managers in our county earning over $100k a year (as publicly available data shows) who are managing just one employee? That seems ridiculous. Isn’t there a way to align departments better, create efficiency metrics, compare our staffing and output with other counties, or look at “best in class” counties to see what they are doing differently?
I understand our county has unique constraints, such as land availability compared to counties like Jackson. However, we should balance our positives against our negatives in any analysis and move forward. This is not a critique of our current public employees, but running a county is like running a business.
I recognize that our revenue streams have changed significantly over the past 12 years. But have our expenses adjusted accordingly? If not, why? Our financial issues started roughly 20 years ago when discussions about changes to timber financing began. That was the time to start a comprehensive analysis. Perhaps it did happen, but it doesn’t seem to have been thorough enough.
We all live here, and we all have a stake in this community. How do we move forward effectively to fix our issues, or are we just going to keep pointing fingers at each other?
In my opinion, this recall is not the answer. What we need is a detailed review of every department in the county, paired with clear communication of that data to all stakeholders. That’s how we create meaningful change.