By Samuel Strait – Reporter at Large – January 27, 2022 If you haven't caught a Board of Supervisor's meeting lately, have no fear, they appear to be focused solely on spending more taxpayer money. Amidst all the word salad on the agenda of the recent January 25, 2022 Board of Supervisor's meeting was the intent to fund the defunct Tri Agency, authorize the hiring of five or six new or unoccupied executive level positions, and give certain members of the County's bureaucracy a rather handsome raise of either 7% of existing salary or 5% depending on classification status. This, while somewhat tone deaf move on the Supervisor's part, no doubt came on the heels of "saving face" over the City's recent decision to raise pay checks of the City employees by 3%. As we have learned over the course of the past year in the pages of the Crescent City Times, government employees in the County and the City already are compensated at a much higher level than most others and are regularly given raises for all sorts of contrived reasons. A common phenomena in all forms of government compensation. Upper level bureaucrats generally speaking find themselves compensated regularly in six figure salaries of over $100,000 wages and benefits. Now the current BOS has seen fit in times of great privation for many within the County to reward its management who are and have done quite well over the past couple of years. Government giving government pay raises flies in the face of common sense and "good" governance, yet four board members, the district five supervisor being absent, voted 4-0 to approve the increase. Who among the people in Del Norte County received a $5,000 raise, a $7500 raise, a $12,000 raise for the coming year? Then ask yourself, are Darrin Short, Valerie Starkey, Gerry Hemmingsen, and Chris Howard the best choice to represent us going forward? In addition to granting the County's "fat cats" a generous raise, the board scattered in talk of hiring a whole new collection of employees, several at the manager or executive level. Not like we already don't have enough "chiefs" in the fire house. A emergency services chief, an animal control chief, three new chiefs at both Crescent Fire and Rescue and Crescent Fire Protection District, the replacing the "empty head" at DHHS Heather Snow, plus several mid level supervisors. Maybe, just maybe, we can skip the part of resuscitating the Tri Agency, and move straight to the part where everyone works for the government at a six figure salary with a generous benefit package. The final bit of nauseating business at the recent BOS meeting was talk of reviving the failed Tri Agency, a fifty year disaster left with piles of debt run by predecessors of the current Board of Stupervisors, and get this current Board members. While Supervisor Starkey was the lone hold out of this train wreck, Chris Howard, Gerry Hemmingsen and Darrin Short were vocal cheer leaders for fifty years of unparalleled financial mismanagement, that resulted in over a million dollars of debt. It was a collection of private business "Loans" that no lending agency on the planet would approve, and all eventually failed with little to no compensation back to the Tri Agency. This left the defunct agency in such disarray in 2012, that no one with any intelligence would consider resurrecting it. Yet here we are. The three measures of economic "success" alluded to by the sharpest brain in the cheer leading bunch were all government projects that reimbursed the Tri Agency with you guessed it, Taxpayer money. What the future holds if the Agency were to be resurrected, you might ask? An OFF SHORE WIND FARM. Will the clown show never cease. Governments becoming banks to lend money for dubious businesses is not sound economic policy. Government getting out of the way is. The revival of the Tri Agency is best left to the rubbish bin and reduction in regulation and taxes a much better bet. Besides, it does not require the taxpayer to fund yet another over paid bumbling fool to direct a future defunct Tri Agency…