We ran a story on Page 1 Sunday about the county budget, personnel cuts and lower morale.

Our reporter asked County Chairman Kathy Morgan about employee morale. She said, "When we have asked employees to take unpaid holidays, when we have asked employees to do more with less, when we’re cutting staff and asking them to absorb the work, that builds a morale problem."

No kidding, Madam Chairman: If you haven’t noticed, that is what has happened to every business that operates in this county.

Further, she added that if the budget digest goes down 11 percent next year, we are going to cut more county employees.

Unfortunately, Chairman Morgan, you have no choice: You will cut what you have to, to insure that county has a balanced budget.

Again, this is no less that every business that operates here is going to have to do or has done already and they also have had no choice.

The businesses in our county that have had to operate with a lean and mean budget have done so in order to survive. We believe that when we do come out of this economic debacle that these businesses will not only be stronger, but will be more productive and profitable because of the lessons learned during this downturn.

We expect the county will also become stronger, and will be leaner and more productive, too, because our county leadership is going to learn from this downturn, just like local business is learning.

We respect the chairman’s concern for her employees: they’re all of our employees, too. We hope that the next time Chairman Morgan compares the county with local business that she remembers her words in regards to operating the county like a local business. If she does, we can be assured that the county will be on a good, stable course.