County vehicle use needs closer look

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