From the budget, I'll move on to a potpourri of issues, plans, challenges, obstacles, etc., that are facing the Board presently. They were all discussed, in some form, at the Budget Committee meeting on Monday July 29.I'll be sending them in installments.
First, a very high-altitude overview of two fundamental issues that may or may not come as a surprise.
First: The County Board really, really stinks at planning ahead, long-term. I think we have a long history of dealing only with what's right in front of our noses.
In my opinion, and in the opinion of most of the Board members I have spoken with about this, we have a truly excellent group of Department Heads, and one of the things almost all of them do very well is long-term planning. So each individual department is looking down the road and making plans for what's ahead for them. However, when it comes to the bigger projects, and taking the Strategic Plan and using it to plot the overall direction of the County and its various components – this seems always to fall down the list of priorities and we often go month after month without making headway on most of them.
For instance, here is a representative sample of some of the projects we must address (and more on each of these later):
- Demolish Highway garage and build a new one – move the whole Dept to a new location?
- Perform $1.5M repairs and renovations on 25-year-old jail
- Decide on how to upgrade/sell/use as is – 242 Main St., the County building on Oneonta's Main Street
- Replace Emergency Services training facility
We've been talking about, and putting off, these projects for years (the Jail renovations are occurring now, and should be finished by the end of the year. But there are still decisions to make here).
All of these (and other examples) cost a lot of money, and that's probably another reason we tend to avoid making progress – at some point in the process, real money will need to be spent.
This all needs to change, and I, for one, am hoping that adding a County Manager/Admin to the mix will help a lot.
Which brings us to: Second: Everything in government takes a whole lot longer than anyone expects. And the County Manager issue is a good example – we've been talking about this for at least ten years, and we may be on our way to a decision and detailed plan by the end of the year. But it has taken forever.
The reason is probably the combination of our reticence regarding long-term planning, and our actual system of governance. We've discussed the planning issue. Our system of governance really requires a thoughtful, complex path to completion, a path that takes time. There are a couple of reasons for this.
First, we have a number of layers of decision-making. On a Department level, decisions are made every day, but as plans, and the decisions needed to implement them, become more substantial and/or complex, they need to come to one or more Committees, and the Committees usually take a good deal of time to consider, come up with and deal with objections and alternatives, put it off for a while to think about it or to consult with others, etc.
When this process is finally complete, and the Committee has agreed on an action, the action usually needs to come to the Administration Committee, which must approve spending, policy and plans that are above a certain level of cost, complexity, etc. Then, if and when the Admin Committee agrees (which, for bigger projects could also take many meetings, for the same reasons the Parent Committee took so long), the proposal needs to be drafted as a Board Resolution and voted on by the full Board. Since each of these entities (Parent Committee, Admin, Full Board) meet only once a month, even a relatively simple proposal could take months to work its way through.
There are pros and cons to taking a long time. We certainly give everyone a chance to weigh in, much time is spent in debate. But many things take too long. Again, we hope the insertion of a County Manager will help to speed this up without losing the thoughtful approach.
The second reason things take so long – and this is more opinion than system analysis – is that nobody likes change or spending a lot of money, and most of what we need to do requires both. It used to be that the Board included many members who were unwilling to spend any money at all, and spent a lot of time trying to slash the budget (not so much any more). So it's so much easier to kick the can down the road in the hopes that it will go away, and in many cases, this is what happened.
The Board needs to be wise stewards of the taxpayers' money, and we can never forget that. But stuff costs money. It's so often the case that expensive plans and proposals that are hotly debated will eventually save us money (Enterprise fleet management, preventive maintenance) or are just the right thing to do (M&C raises). You will get used to hearing the phrase “unfunded mandate,” which means that NYS has required Counties to do something expensive without providing any, or enough, funding to help pay for it. And so forth.
As we move forward, it is our hope that we can become an institution that plans well and pursues those plans in a timely manner.
Next - taxes! Aren't you excited?
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