Dear Editor: After reading this mornings headlines regarding our county's 2009 budget I was absolutely shocked at the chairman's comments on why we have over $700,000 in additional expenses.
It seems that he is following the national tactic of the president and blaming past commissions.
Mr. Chairman please take note George Bush is no longer in office and you are responsible for what the finance department accomplishes. Remember you and Commissioner Nesbitt hired her over the community's outcry for someone with more skill and experience. Now YOU must accept this blame for her. The other 40 candidates all had vastly more years of experience and education and would have already set in motion protocols to avoid this embarrassment and waste of commission time.
But more important than any other issue is that this $700,000, and still growing number, is making a complete farce of our so called balanced budget process. All we do is just roll these dollars into the 2010 budget we just went through and it already means we start 2010 $700,000 short. The taxpayers of Rockdale have been blind sided by this and it means the millage increase previously stated by Ms. Miller for 2010 homeowner tax bills are already off.
Further with the down-sliding economy, as seen by everyone but Commissioner Nesbitt, we homeowners will be once again be hoodwinked into paying still higher tax bills.
By the way Mr. Chairman thank you for using my comments of the previous 13 months about the Host slowly disappearing at South Rockdale Civic Association meeting last week. I have widely proclaimed this at SRCA and the two county wide Home owners For Better Government Forums. However in the south it is customary and good manners to acknowledge the intellectual property of others.
Now back to the budget process, I ask why did we even have that huge dog and pony show of trying to develop a so-called balanced budget when this is allowed, and is what just happened a violation of law? Has our local District Attorney or other appropriate agency taken the proper steps to investigate this? Have laws been broken and will these officials step in and do their part to protect us? By the way they are also elected officials too.
Ms. Miller has been here for years and knows full well exactly what happens and why this was going to happen. Now that the cat is out of the bag we see the chairman and Commissioner Nesbitt trying to cover for their error in judgment for promoting the least qualified candidate out of 41 applicants.
I conclude this revelation will not be the last we will see, and only the voters will have the power to fully correct our course of county government.
Don Meyer
Home Owners for
Better Government
