Commentary and Opinion by Samuel Strait – March 1, 2024 I actually gave thought to attending this particular "Special Meeting" of the County's Board of Supervisors, on February 29,2024, but the futility of narrowing down the multitude of issues that surround the content of what would constitute a "Strategic Plan" for the County that was of any value to the County's residents or have faith that the current make up of the County's leadership could in any way carry it off is daunting. Having attended meetings of the BOS for some time now, the idea that future planning to address issues that often rub up against Federal and State insanities are solvable within the County's bureaucracy seem a faint hope. Already our local what passes for government spends far more time seeking to clutter the halls of government with an ever increasing level of unaffordable dead weight. While it shouldn't be a surprise to anyone who lives in Del Norte County that its residents are few in number and most are relatively poor. Sixty percent of the County's budget is for the most part entangled in the mandates of the State which fund the Department of Health and Human Service. Nearly half the County's work force is engaged in making sure that it provides services for County residents that insures that they are nearly as dysfunctional as DHHS. When approaching anything that resembles a plan that would be considered "strategic", our local government will look at symptoms of our issues without a hint of understanding the underlying problems that plague this County and likely every other poor rural counties in the State. Lack of affordable housing, lack of jobs, a non existent economy, are but a superficial facade for what ails Del Norte County. Housing is expensive State wide and as a result affordable housing is only available by subsidizing that industry. Unfortunately it is unsustainable. Jobs, for what ever reason are NOT lacking in this County. As a result there is no reason to think that our population which consists of a great many poor people cannot become gainfully employed. For what ever reason they choose not to be employed. One only has to look at the vacancies in the ranks of the County's government work force to understand this. While it is easy to point to the fundamentally flawed public education system, once again that is only part of the problem. As far as this particular attempt by the County's BOS to address "Strategic Planning", it will likely occupy an inordinate amount of time and funding with very little chance of success. Ultimately it will end up on that "shelf" when constant revisions as a result of lack of success will foil any chance of correcting issues years in the making. Clearly issues of blight, lack of infrastructure maintenance, homelessness, crime, and a hundred other issues that line up on the "to do" list are not things that fell off the truck last week. They are problems of long standing. Unless services are reduced to those most critical to the County, progress will become insurmountable and government will continue to be reactive. There is not a half million population in this County and the resources that go along with it. If those kinds of situations exist in California and they are having difficulty addressing their issues, the future looks pretty grim for Del Norte County going forward. Our citizens may wish to be served in a fashion that is unaffordable, it is up to our leadership to understand the futility of reaching for that level of service and bring sanity to what our local government is capable. This is not readily apparent in our leadership at any local level. Government cannot continue to buy what it "WANTS" when it cannot afford what it "NEEDS". While I watched this meeting on video, I detected no evidence that this was something that merited any consideration that this was to be considered Strategic in any way. There is no clear plan or solutions for even addressing the issues revealed by the public. The issues are long standing and if there is a "Plan" for addressing any of these long standing issues, planning to address them would have long since occurred. It has not. Patting the County's bureaucrats on the head and praising them for their lack of success merely inhibits any effort to correct course. The County's labor force, those that actually conduct the County's business, are not at fault for the dreadful lack of ability at the leadership and supervisory level. Until that void is corrected, this County will suffer from a government that is entirely reactive, and not in a positive way.