Commentary and Opinion by Samuel Strait – August 8, 2023 It is not as if Supervisor Howard's participation is exactly missed, as the remaining members of the Board of Supervisors are secure in their rubber stamping of the County bureaucracy's business. The continued irrelevancy of the Chamber's members is almost painful to watch. They gobble up the malfunction of County government like it was a gourmet meal, with desert included. It is almost as if the message is "Public get out of our way." There has been no sign of life from any of the Board members since Supervisor Starkey's tearful attempt to keep Juvenile Hall in the mix. It has become almost a boiler plate bi weekly event that ignores public input and trundles down a dysfunctional track, all the while adding more cars to the train which carries no freight. The opening ceremonies are clearly a simple sign that a public meeting is being held. Supervisors Starkey, Wilson, Short, and Howard, when he is not on vacation, regale us with all the meetings they attend, yet as that old cartoonist advertisement lamented, "Where's the Beef?" At what point will any of the "five" understand that more government at a higher rate of compensation isn't making things better, merely increasing the opportunities for more dysfunction. I am almost beginning to feel sorry for the County's Union representative when she spins her tale of woe. Clearly she has deluded herself into believing that for the most part government compensation packages provided by the County are woefully inadequate for a comfortable life style. I would suspect it has been some time since she was in the regular work force in the County where wages and benefits, that is if any are available, lag considerably behind what the County's work force has to scrape by on. Clearly she was offended by the reference to two pay raises in the past year that in her view "was simply, pound on the lecture", not enough, and disrespectful. The Consent Agenda went pretty much as usual, full of new employees and pork for Health and Human Services. Total cost to the tax payers of over $7 million, most going to DHHS . There were two items pulled for "discussion" that allowed an all government "word salad" that is until the "Public" wished to chip in to the "discussion", at which point the definition of "discussion" changed in mid stream to "the public should get out of the way, no invitation extended", representative government at its finest. Item #7 was of particular interest where a clearly inadequate Director of Health and Human Service desperately needs four additional administrators to do "her" job. At least she will now have time in the mornings to update her stock portfolio by reading the Wall Street Journal. Such a life….perhaps two hundred plus employees are not enough, got to keep the Union representative happy after all. 4-0 by the way. Scheduled Items consisted of the "keep yours mitts" off our growing local government, no matter how ineffective or dysfunctional we have become. Just keep the trough full of dollars, so we might spend into oblivion. No matter how often the Public Comments advise to reign it in, the Board remains oblivious. More solid representation. Other items consisted of the current derelict edifice that the County's Jail has become. Not that this is in anyway a new condition for the County's many edifices, seems they all need either to be torn down as historic relics, or require millions in resurrection efforts. One only has to go down the list of County buildings and infrastructure that in most cases are a walking disaster requiring far more than "putting lipstick on a pig". While the latest report of the services provided by DHHS was in the normal scheduled event portion of the "circus", it has found its way into the "and this is progress" segment of the BOS meeting. It clearly appears that the DHHS cannot possibly grow big enough. Lots of programs on display primarily for Mental Health. One wonders if there might be a separate program for every single member of the entire County population at the rate the BOS is going. One is constantly in awe of the justification for a County department that employs 200 plus people and consumes 60% of the County's budget, yet still manages to grow the population of people in need of services. One suspects that sooner or later the County will run out of dysfunctional adults to populate DHHS's need for more people to be able to label " no longer has the ability to operate in regular society". General government consisted of the formation of an entirely "new" sub part of the Probation department. The ostensible reason for this regime build is to accommodate the former employees of Juvenile Hall. A great opportunity to make the whole process much more difficult and give everyone in the "new" reentry unit a third raise in the last year. As a side note, it also gave Union Rep, Norma Williams, another chance to pound on the lectern in favor of her terribly disrespected employees. The remaining item of General Government, an enormous work load of four items for the Board, consisted of defining what the new reentry positions are expected to accomplish. Got to make Norma Happy. Finally after just short of two hours, we have $81,000.00 being transferred to Probation to manage the task of housing juvenile offenders out of the County. Nothing like quality from our local "representatives". If only that were to occur, the quality part.