If you can remain calm while all around you there is public outrage, then perhaps you don’t fully understand the situation.
I don’t know what happens to people when they go to work for the government but it seems that they must be de-programmed and re-booted with fuzzy logic. It seems to me that since our newfangled form of leadership, “Home Rule,” we have created even more layers of government nitwitians.
The list is long but my favorite fiasco is the newly created Department of Dump. A committee was formed to study moving the dump because the roof over the tipping floor at our current dump was deemed unsafe and torn down. These are the same people that drive around in shiny new yellow trucks that seem to get replaced every time the ashtray gets full. What’s it cost to move the dump? Nobody knows. The important part is, the old dump is dirty and who wants a dirty dump, especially if you’re driving a shiny new free truck. Not free for the taxpayers, but you get the idea.
A super special SWAC committee was formed to find a new site for a shiny new dump. Three of the members keep asking why do we need a new dump and what will it cost? The County Council hired expert dump consultants to find a super suitable site. These super expert suitable site surveyors we paid a seemingly superior sum of over $600,000 for their savvy summation.
Two of the sites were rejected in 2003 because of proximity to the airport and nobody wants planes crashing into our shiny new dump because a few seagulls take down a herd of Cessnas. Not to mention the AOPA would probably sue the stuffing out of the county for violating the FAA rules about a dumps proximity to an airport.
One site seems to have made the cut, and luckily the county already owns the property. which was bought for some unknown reason a couple of years ago for $1.5 million. Despite the fact the site is under the approach to the airport (AOPA lawsuit imminent) and surrounded by wetlands, it seems to be a swell site considering. Unless you consider the cost of moving the dump, and consider that the old dump site will become unusable.
Of course, if the new dump becomes too expensive to dump at, because it’s going to cost more than a new ferry dock to build, the town could reopen the old dump and we would then have two competing dumps, violating county code. Brilliant.
Who are these people and what happened to common sense? I will make a wager it would have been cheaper to fix the roof on the tipping floor and remodel our current dump, than to hire a gaggle of special dump consultants.
No one still knows how much the new dump will cost and who will pay for it. I would imagine the same people that pay for all the shiny new trucks. If the county has a pile of money burning a hole in your pocket, how about tossing a few million bucks at the school district and keeping the dump where it is.
Paul Le Baron
San Juan Island
