Wednesday, Jun 24, 2009
Valley Citizen
The Valley Citizen is right. The new courthouse is a rub on the county. No doubt if we had to do it over again, with today’s economic reality, I think there would be a lot of things that would be done differently.
I’ll admit, from the perspective of the three county commissioners, I’m probably the least cheerful about the new courthouse. Like the millions of Americans who got into mortgages they couldn’t afford, it seems that the county entered into a capital expense without a clear way to pay for it. They banked on the idea that residents were going to vote to increase their taxes or that money was going to continue to flow into the county like spring run off. Now we know that even in Teton Valley, everything comes to an end. More importantly we have learned that the development boom in Teton County cost our county and its taxpayers much more money than it produced.
Prior to being elected, I thought it was a given what government should be expected to take care of: roads, hospitals, schools, and the basic administration of government. But in Idaho we have this unfunded mandate approach to limited government that tells Counties what they have to do, but doesn’t allow them the ability to successfully do it. Take for example the Planning and Building Department. We are required to have a comprehensive plan, ordinances to implement it and a process to make decisions on subdividing land, but we aren’t required to have a staff to support those functions. Because we don’t have the tax revenue to fund it, we have to use fees.
County revenue for 2010 is projected to be about equal to what we had in 2005. However we now have more people, more roads, more crime and more school children as a result of the biggest development boom the valley will likely ever experience. It has me feeling a bit frustrated these days because words of caution were not heeded years ago and now we are suffering with the predicted aftermath of an extremely one-sided approach to local economic growth.
I’ve noticed that we have a history of short-sightedness in Teton County. Typically because we feel we can’t afford what we really need or are not willing to take the time to do things right. We have to consider our decisions for the long term, whether it’s our courthouse, the hospital or solid waste and stop passing off the hard decisions to future decision makers. Reacting to a crisis is almost always more expensive than working from an organized plan.
It’s taken me awhile to get here, but the new courthouse is the right long-term decision for Teton County. Year after year, the County’s lack of planning has wasted taxpayer dollars in inefficient and ineffective workplaces for county government in the name of frugality. In tight years like the next few, the new courthouse is a hard nut to swallow, but 5, 10 years from now, we will be happy that the prior commission bit the bullet.
For now, and in the next few years, our most important and significant decisions will be to establish a sound economy that will lead us to a prosperous and sustainable future. That requires careful and detailed planning that does not leave unsolved problems for our children.
