By Van P. Keele, Hamilton
Glenn Kimball wants everyone to shut up about our “hard-working county commissioners.” We, the citizens of Ravalli County–Independents, Democrats, Libertarians, and right-minded Republicans–will not be silent when our commissioners aren’t serving us. It’s our duty to speak the truth, whether the leaders happen to be Democrats, Republicans, or Martians. I have friends of all political stripes and no one’s satisfied with the commissioners’ “hard work.” The commissioners may be serving Mr. Kimball but not our county.
The criticisms leveled against our commissioners involve important issues based on real events and actual decisions made by them; criticisms founded on truth and reality. The citizens know it. Mr. Kimball should too.
The commissioners promised transparency and public involvement. What we’ve gotten is limits on citizen input and secret backroom deals. This has damaged their reputation and our county’s budget.
The commissioners’ governing philosophy is based on small government, eliminating waste and rejecting federal aid. What they’ve done is wasted many thousands on consultants and doing redundant airport assessments, taking federal money to do it.
Regrettably they’ve failed to preserve life by promising to reject future County health funding. This’ll lead to sickness and maybe death to people with treatable conditions, while preventing pregnant mothers from getting the healthcare they need, putting their unborn at risk.
Our commissioners cut 20-odd jobs but never cut their own benefits a smidgen. This whole budget process reeks of hypocrisy. They say 5 commissioners is too many, but won’t go part-time to save 5 to 10 jobs. They readily take government benefits that they believe everyone else should be denied. They won’t even give up their commuting mileage reimbursement ($thousands). Who gets paid to commute to work?!
So Mr. Kimball, when our commissioners are wronging the people and breaking promises, we simply must call them on it.
Kathie Roubik says
The county commission is a group elected to serve the public. The present body seems to have forgotten that in layoffs, hiring political cronies,and other abuses of the people,they are harming the people they serve. The present group diverges from previous practice and is demanding an approach to the commission which is unusual.
They aren’t titled as yet, they are still public servants, and they need to be audited by an outside source. The public servants are not serving well.
Kathie Roubik says
The commission has a mistaken belief that they were crowned somewhere is the swearing in process. We are not to speak to them by name. We are limited to the number of seconds we can approach and speak to them.
The fiddling with funds,the mistreatment of employees, favoring political supporters, Next,bows and curtseys.
We are talking public servants here, elected to serve us, as lest since we became Americans, you know, citizens of the country this lot disrespects.Enough our knees don’t bow easily.