Say Anything Blog

Stupid:

Grand Forks County likely will ask voters in June to approve a home rule charter and to OK a 1 percent county sales tax to pay off the construction debt on the $16 million county correctional center.

The County Board today will review results of a telephone survey of county residents to gauge interest in a sales tax to pay the debt.

That survey, conducted by the Social Science Research Institute at UND, indicates that 56 percent of people responding either strongly favor or mildly favor implementing a sales tax to pay the debt service on the jail.

And, of the 56 percent who favor a sales tax, 89 percent, or 341 people, said they strongly favor or mildly favor a 1 percent sales tax to pay the debt service.

I say this is a rigged election because the county just sent out their property tax statements with a huge increase in the property tax.  The question amounted to do you want to pay higher property taxes or higher sales taxes?

The question that’s missing is “Would you rather pay more taxes to pay for the jail or expect the county to pay for at least part of the cost with savings in other operations?’ I’ve asked around and I haven’t found anyone who’s saying that the county commission tried to save any money in other areas.  In fact not only did they raise mills (when the other entities actually cut) to pay for their jail fiasco they also raised the mills to pay for on-going expenses.  That’s despite an increase in the property values well over inflation.

The Grand Forks County Commission is a dysfunctional organization if there ever was one.  They decided to build this jail saying they didn’t have to get input from the voters because it wouldn’t cost us anything, they’d make so much money from housing federal prisoners that it would be a money maker.  Well they were wrong.  The federal prisoners aren’t lucrative and who in the world thinks Grand Forks County should be in the jail business.  You gotta have one, but it’s a necessary evil, not a business opportunity.

I think the voters would be nuts to empower and reward the commission with a yes vote.  Before anything’s done they need to do a few things.

The first thing is the commission needs to admit that they are the ones that screwed up.  Quit blaming the jail administrator that’s no longer there (as the Herald article dutifully passes along.) The County Commission is the ones that have the responsibility to make decisions and they need to admit that.

The second thing they need to do is open up their books.  I’ve heard from a couple sources that their books are a nightmare to figure out what’s going on.  I would recommend that they get a public audit before anything is done.  In fact the AFP gave the county an F for transparency as well as fiscal responsibility. The county property tax revenue is now higher than the city which really shows they need to be held to public scrutiny.

The final thing is that they need to make a huge effort to reduce their expenses to cover for their massive error in judgment.  Rewarding the county by bailing them out with this sales tax increase would be sending the wrong message. 

Speaking of that it’s clear to me that we need new leadership in the county.  For some reasons the county never receives as much attention from the voters or the media as the city.  We need to hold our elected leaders to high standards particularly when it comes to be open to the public. 

The original city sales tax was for the water plant.  After that was paid for the city said let us keep it and we’ll reduce property taxes.  Who’s property taxes went down?  To add insult to injury the city was soon after ANOTHER water plant upgrade which they stuck on us with massive fee increases.  (And now they’re after that again.)