For the second month in a row, the budget has been the main event. Your commissioner took on the big spenders again. While no colleague converted to fiscal conservatism, there were some victories.Example No. 1.A detoxification center gets $209,000 yearly from county taxpayers. Some are voluntarily admitted; others are delivered by police and sheriff’s deputies who cannot jail someone for public inebriation. Let’s calculate benefits to the county. Last year, 52 sheriff detainees stayed an average of 1.8 nights. Therefore, $209,000 divided by 52 detainees is $4,019 per person. When divided by 1.8 nights each, we paid $2,233 per cot per night. The board agreed with me – this social welfare handout to protect people from their bad choices is nuts! The giveaway ends in 2008.Example No. 2.Three years ago, I took a six-hour tour of most of our county parks with the parks director. Included were two rental homes at the edge of two parks. Fox Run Park has a house of 2,800 square feet on 5.6 acres; and Fountain Creek Park has a two-story house, built about 1991, which could have its own one-acre parcel. I’ve often said the county should not be in the rental business. Net income figures to justify these investments were bogus. The $85 total yearly repair cost listed for one was absurd! Why? Other repairs done by park staff were not listed, and zero was set aside for roof and carpet replacement or other obvious, predictable costs. No insurance cost was included; no property, income or sales tax was collected.The net income was under $20,000 yearly. Assessor records suggest total market values of about $550,000. Last summer, the county got 5.5 percent interest on its loose cash. Even figuring $500,000 at 5 percent, that’s $25,000 yearly income, trouble free, with both houses back on the tax rolls. I am pleased to report that, after three years, the board finally agreed with me and voted to sell the houses and two other surplus properties. It’s wonderful when government finally does the right thing.Example No. 3.CSU Extension is a state agency, yet receives more money from counties than any other source. Our county gift is $298,000 yearly. The board first agreed to end the subsidy, but after intense lobbying by dozens of children, the chairman made the decision to cut $149,000.CSU Extension does many things, but none is a proper function of government in general or the county in particular. They teach manure management, cake decorating and microwave cooking. They teach people to exploit food stamps, get subsidized loans, and improve the self-esteem of senior citizens. The 4-H program could be self-sufficient if each participant donated another dollar per week in dues, but CSU Extension gets under 5 percent of its revenue from user fees. Why not use the Referendum C windfall of $6.2 BILLION, two-thirds of which was earmarked for education?The rest of the board approved the sheriff’s request for $22,398 for a dental chair, later called a dental suite to reflect its accessories. It replaces an aging recliner the part-time dentist uses to work on jail inmates. I asked if we could make repairs to it or find a used one. Once the sheriff’s request made the news, an anonymous person sent me a printout of a new dental suite for sale on Ebay for $2,888, plus $399 shipping – about one-seventh the sheriff’s price. It lacked some features but was quite similar. Overspending goes on all the time in all departments, because no one else in the county questions spending taxpayer money.The county also gives to the Health Department, a state-county hybrid, over $2 million more annually than state law requires. One million dollars of that – the complete county property tax for 10,000 typical homes – goes for sexually transmitted disease programs.There is still much to cut, including next year’s $1.4 million increase in employee health care benefits, and an illegal $1.7 million sales tax revenue increase by enslaving retailers to work for the county without compensation. The TABOR Amendment forces government to set spending priorities rather than simply raise taxes. The county is wasting slightly less money than before I came, but it’s still in the millions; see Spending Spree under County Antics at my Web site.Contact me at (719) 520-6412, by e-mail at DouglasBruce@elpasoco.com, or by writing me at 27 E. Vermijo Ave. Colorado Springs, CO 80903. Audiotapes of all BOCC meetings, both simulcast and in archives, are available at www.elpasoco.com. Comcast cable broadcasts are on Library Channel 17 at 7 p.m. Mondays and Thursdays, and repeated at 10 p.m. Back issues of my monthly reports are at www.DouglasBruce.com.
