County vehicle use needs closer look
Published: April 8, 2009
Editor:
I was greatly honored to read that I should seek election to the Madison County Board of Supervisors. As much as I would like to serve, I am unable to seek this position because of the demands of my farm operation. Also, the “rap sheet” I have — compliments of some Madison folks — might be a handicap.
However, I do have some very serious thoughts regarding the regrettably rising expenditures of the county. One must not blame all on the supervisors – they serve and spend quite a lot of time without commensurate compensation. The cost of running the county is ultimately decided by the appointed county administrator and the school superintendent. They are the ones who sign the checks!
Do they have the willingness and capability to provide the services at reasonable costs?
Well, here is a small but symptomatic example: I observed last week an EMS employee with an EMS vehicle to drive to McDonald’s at U.S. 29 to pick up his lunch and drive back the EMS headquarters. Now that does not seem to be a big deal — but the employee used an expensive county vehicle, drove round-trip 3.5 miles with this costly specialty vehicle and used county gas. If he does this daily that amounts to about 250 trips a year to get lunch — with 3.5 miles or 875 miles per year at $ 1 per mile, which is equal to $875 per year, per employee.
I also noticed that several school busses are daily parked during lunch hours at Food Lion or go to the post office. This causes also several thousand dollars additional expenses to pay for their personal business. These small, rather insignificant examples show that the Madison county administrator is not exercising proper control and so one must wonder how many valuable dollars are squandered.
Madison County’s budget could be substantially reduced and county service increased through a more efficient and qualified administrator and school superintendent. The present administrator and superintendent have been several years on the job – together they draw an excellent compensation package of approximately $330,000 annually. But Madison’s county administrator and school superintendent have not delivered.
To the contrary — they increased the number of employees, thus creating small but costly “empires.” Neither has exercised cost controls. This must stop. I ask the supervisors to take the necessary action – now.
Herb Putz
Madison County
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Reader Reactions
Mr. Putz,
While I understand your concern of saving money is these hard economic times, I honestly think that you need to make sure you have all of your facts completely straight. Your comment about buses being parked at Food Lion needs to be commented on. I know of at least 1 bus driver who works at Food Lion from the time after that she drops off students at MCHS & WMS until the time she returns to pick them up. Would it make more sense to drive all the way home to get her personal vehicle? or simply cross Rt. 29 to go to Food Lion. She would actually be using more County fuel to drive home and drive back out later.
We need to always look at things in context.
I am so sorry to read that you will not run for the 2 open postions for the madison county board of supervisors.you should reconsider. I find it a bit confusing that if you are so busy on your farm that you have enough time on your hands to observe what other people are doing during their lunchtime.I had some respect for you in the past but your recent attack was very petty compared to your other issues. have you ran out of issues that you have to reach down to look for these?? I believe that you have lost some of your credibilty in this letter.
Man up and run for office, do not hid with your poor excuses for not running.
do your duty and create a postive from a negative.
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