Two days ago, on Sept 15, the Lake County (FL) County Commissioners held a morning and then afternoon meeting.
The Morning Meeting (9am):
It was a fairly routine meeting to approve various agenda items and you can get the agenda (WITH clickable links to supporting documents, which is cool!) on the website HERE.
However, several people were there to listen to the discussion at the END of the meeting, during Commissioner Comments, about County Manager Cindy Hall's annual employee evaluation. One local newspaper already reported that both Commissioner Jimmy Conner and Elaine Renick had given her poor marks in few areas.
Knowing this was an issue, I had even visited the County offices and using a records request, had reviewed Cindy Hall's resume. It actually was more impressive than I thought. She has a Master's in Economics and experience in several government agencies leading to her being hired a few years ago as Deputy County Manager, then moving up when a vacancy occurred.
Then the discussion at the meeting started, with Jimmy leading. At one point, he questioned why the other three Commissioners would give her high marks in every area when there had been a series of blunders that have been reported in the press, and apparently Jimmy listed in a LONG version of the evaluation of Hall. At that point, Commissioner Linda Stewart took umbrage and verbally slammed Jimmy and gave support to Cindy. Stewart had read an "audit report" (which we find amazing), and thought the problems could be fixed with a workshop to establish a new system to follow up on prior audit findings that had been agreed to by County Managers in writing, but then apparently never tracked by Hall, or implemented by Management. One example is the SHIP audit which found numerous problems with ethics and questionable payments, and resulted in the in charge manager "resigning".
This was a great spat... you had to be there for the fun.
In my opinion, either Hall and County "managers" have never been to classes on Management Controls and reporting, and have no clue how to develop internal reporting systems that would have prevented several instances of huge overages in budgets such as the Fire Dept. going over their overtime budget by $1-million. The result is a reactionary management style, which rushes to fix things after the fact if they don't have management analysis systems to DETECT and PREVENT problems BEFORE they occur. They have an entire department for budgeting - you would think they had a report that made sure that cumulative budget totals that exceeded planned budgets would result in a warning message or indicator. Those indicators (such as a little red flag!!) or red text IF looked at by staff could result in actions to prevent budget overages before they got very big. BETTER managers in well run corporations would even have their own reports to show ratios at the end of the third week in a month so they could adjust spending to hit budgets by the end of a reporting month. I guess this County doesn't do that.
So, the Board at their workshop needs to focus on ensuring that "front end" management control systems exist to DETECT and PREVENT problems, rather than just on fixing spending or budget problems after the damage is discovered. You can find that in books on "Management Controls" or "Accounting System Controls" on Amazon. EVERY accounting graduate employed by the County should have taken a class in cost accounting and in management accounting, but maybe they forgot?
Evening Meeting - 5pm
This special meeting was the first of two "public meetings" to discuss the budget before it is approved and allow public input.
The Board also was to vote on some revisions to the prior tentative budget of about $411-million and approve the addition of another $4-million to that amount.
But, hardly anyone spoke on any of the issues EXCEPT the planned budget cut and closure of the Lake County History Museum, which has a full time Curator and half time person, plus uses the first floor of the old County Courthouse. They have some neat exhibits in there.
Axing the History Museum - our Update
This started at an earlier County Commissioner meeting on budgets when Jimmy Conner proposed eliminating the wages and positions for the staff, and moving the historical "artifacts" to the lobbies of other County buildings, then since the the Sheriff might get the 2nd and 3rd floors, due to security concerns, the first floor should also go to the Sheriff. I wrote a posting on this earlier this month.
At this Sept 15th evening meeting, I asked the Sheriff and he said he never asked for the first floor, so Sheriff Borders is off the hook on this one. After several emotional pleas from the public (including me), the Board, initiated by Linda Stewart, decided that 1) The history museum would stay where it was, so moving it is no longer an issue, and 2) the budget for the museum staff will continue for six months to give the County Historical Commission time to plan how they would take over and run the museum and exhibits when the staff positions are eliminated in 6 months.
So, the museum is back where it already is, and the staff doesn't get cut until six months from now, and the County Historical Commission (which will continue to get its annual budget of $20,000) will run the museum with volunteers or donations.
I talked to Commissioner Jimmy Conner who is a fiscal hawk, and this proposal was one of many to reduce County spending, but it was an emotional one.
Boy, it was tough watching the entire Kabuki saga unfold, though, but a compromise was reached that allowed everyone some breathing time. IF none of the public had appeared before the Commission to give public input, a different result could have happened. Keep going to those government meetings, folks.
vj
