County Tax Dollars at Work??

It has recently come to light that Saline County has ordered "new" plat books. I understand this is done every few years and is a reasonable/necessary investment by the county. From the details that I have access to, it appears that 200 plat books have been printed and delivered. The only problem is the data that was used was severely out-of-date and about two years old. Various county officials have already received numerous complaints about mistakes, misidentification of property owners. From the information I have heard, it appears there was a complete lack of communication between the various offices in the courthouse and the decision was made without consultation between the county commissioners and other office holders. The assessor was not consulted and was unaware that the books had even been ordered. The computer records that were used in compiling the book were a minimum of two years out of date and are not even used because of the bad/outdated information.

It would seem like it would be easy to phone, walk up a flight of stairs or call a meeting of interested, knowledgeable officials to discuss the matter. From what I understand, the County Commission decided to move ahead and authorized the purchase.

Now we have some 200 plat books that were out of date when they were delivered. I am not sure the amount of taxpayer dollars that was required to purchase these books. With the economy in a free-fall, tax revenues on the decline, new tax increases (voter approved) and expenses continually rising, it seems that every dollar should be watched very closely.

The plat books being printed now also doesn't make any sense when looking at current county projects that are underway. We have discussed the 911 Commission in the past and most citizens are aware that the process has begun to remap the entire county. This project includes the renaming of roads, adding of new signs and means a lot of our citizens will be undergoing an address change.

Even if the "new" plat books had correct information... it would only be current for less than a year. Why not wait until the mapping & new addresses are in place before spending (what I guess to be several thousand dollars) this money? Why was there no discussion/dialogue between the commission and other county officials? With the county cutting $260,000.00 is this a necessary expense? Sales taxes are down over $6,000.00 already this year and more budget cuts could be coming later this year.

We recently passed a tax for courthouse restoration and it was budgeted at $3,090,000.00 but the bids amounted to $3,600,000.00 with no bids on one of the items. The cost of the bathroom on the first floor was listed at $60,000.00. Our presiding commissioner stated "now that she has numbers to work with, she is better able to apply for more grants to fund the restoration of the historic building, which could help increase the project budget." I question the amount of money available through grants at this late date; from my experience the grant process is a long process in most cases. Cities applying for CDBG (Community Development Block Grants) usually begin a year or more before any project is started. These applications are done before any bids are open, using estimates of the projected costs.

In March 2008, MDN reported: "the county would eventually like to repair the entire courthouse. A complete renovation is expected to cost around $3.2 million." It would seem these figures were pretty accurate and the work on grants could have been started some time ago.

To paraphrase a quote attributed to Sen. Barry Goldwater: '... a million dollars here and a million dollars there and pretty soon we are talking about some real money.'

This money comes from the citizens of Saline County and our elected officials are charged with being good stewards of these funds. In tough economic times, it is more important than ever that all our tax money be scrutinized and watched closer than ever. Can we say this is happening today in Saline County?