Citizen Journalist: Empty rhetoric belies County Hall’s poor planning

by Mike Martin

July 11,2008

Public School Playbook

Proving it's never too late to jump aboard a bandwagon, Karen Miller, Boone County's southern district commissioner and re-election candidate, recently boarded the sound planning express with a quarter-page open letter to her constituents that appeared in several local newspapers.

"It is imperative that Boone County works closely with other counties, related agencies, utilities, etc. to develop long range plans and policies," she wrote.

But Boone County government has done little to promote cooperation or planning during Miller's 16-year tenure. As if County Hall had ripped a page from the Columbia Public Schools playbook, county commissioners recently announced they are short of money after spending big on projects like the $14 million, sales tax-financed office space expansion.

"Although the Boone County Courthouse expansion project is adding two floors…the county treasury might not have enough money to hire the custodian who would help keep the new building clean," wrote Columbia Daily Tribune reporter Sara Semelka last month.

County Hall's history of poor planning took another turn during the debate late last year about how to cover the cost of this year's elections, about $913,000.

Commissioners Ken Pearson and Miller advocated raising property taxes. Northern district commissioner Skip Elkin disagreed. He suggested spending money from county reserves.

Citing "economic uncertainty," Pearson told the Tribune a tax increase would be the better choice. "We aren't certain what revenues are going to be coming in," he explained.
But just months earlier, Pearson and Miller had led the charge to blow most of County Hall's 2006 surplus – about $700,000 – to buy the Johnston Paint Building, paying $20,000 over its appraised value with "no specific plan."

Wealth Concentration

Rather than build and staff satellite offices in surrounding communities to handle routine county chores like property tax payments and courthouse filings, county commissioners have concentrated millions of tax dollars within a two-block radius of the downtown courthouse.

The 2007 Johnston acquisition capped a three-year, $4 million, 30,000-square-foot building-buying binge that included the former Jerry's Hair Studio – which our fickle commissioners sold a year later to attorney Bob Murray; the Ford, Parshall and Baker law offices, where a "For Rent – Contact the County Commission" sign has been hanging since the early Paleozoic Era; the old Lifestyles Furniture building that tenant Fera Technologies abandoned, sticking County Hall with over a quarter million dollars in unpaid rent; and the Guaranty Land Title building.

Despite Commissioner Miller's oft-repeated explanation that it's all part of some grand plan to expand court-related services, not one acquisition came with a plan.

The Guaranty Land Title building was, in fact, the only property commissioners even "suggested for a county function," the Tribune reported, "but nobody knows what."

The only visible result is a vast land and building reserve that has systematically deprived other communities and priorities of their fair share of tax dollars, from the sheriff to public works, from mental health care to county road care, from Ashland to Centralia, from Rocheport to Harrisburg.

It has also apparently deprived the average county employee of decent wages. Calling this year's 1 percent county employee raise "insulting," county assessor Tom Schauwecker even weighed in.

"Adding to Schauwecker's frustration were recent capital acquisitions, such as the Johnston Paint and Lifestyles furniture buildings, which he said depleted reserve funds and did not go through the budgetary process," the Columbia Tribune reported on Jan. 4.

Did not go through the budgetary process? Sounds less like poor planning and more like a scandal to me.

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