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I have to say that I am very disappointed in some of our county employees for the way they acted in last week's meeting on the county budget. I think that every single one of them who booed Jack Waldrip when he spoke should call him at his company and apologize to him acting that way toward him.
It is interesting to me that those same people were not against him when he was putting his neck out on the line to develop and build buildings that created jobs, served as a tax base for several thousand property tax dollars to help fund the county budget and that budget has paid all of those booing tax increase supporters. Why would anyone slap the hand that feeds them?
I also think that Tom Oliver and his cohorts also owe him an apology for sitting there on their thrones and not reminding all of the county employees that it is because of people like Mr Waldrip that many of them have a job to begin with. This county would employ one-tenth of the people it does if it depended on homeowners alone for the tax base and did not have these developers taking the risk like they have.
I also wonder why there was no booing toward the commissioners at that meeting. I think that if anyone deserved to be booed, it should be Tom and the boys. They were the ones overseeing this thing as it went south: Starting parks knowing we did not have the money to open them; building a new library knowing what we were facing; buying Liberty Mutual knowing we were cash poor; renting 15,0000-square-foot buildings to heat and cool and have only five or six employees working in them (voter office); and trying to scare residents into accepting this bull about having to take ambulances off the road when they could consolidate the tag offices and keep the ambulances.
How about a big old boo for that load of waste.
Maybe if we had better leadership, we would not have to be looking at such drastic measures to balance the budget. If I were a county employee, I would be thinking that maybe this would not be as bad if my government leaders were doing a better job of money management and not wasting so much.
Don't jump on Waldrip. You should give him an award for standing up for taxpayers. People like him are the ones trying to pay you all. People like Tom and the boys are the ones who are taking Jack's money and mismanaging it and wasting it.
You all go ahead and push businesses over the edge, lose more tax base and we will visit this thing every year for several more years. Stay after it, Jack. You have done good for us. Maybe you could run for commissioner sometime.
Sam Smith
Murrayville