Last night at the Buncombe County Commissioners’ meeting, Mike Fryar asked some questions about some funky numbers. Gwen Wisler has done this on occasion for Asheville City Council, but other than that, this is an anomalous phenomenon. AB Tech had paid a consultant, whose name I am unable to obtain, to estimate costs for capital improvements. The county had already run the numbers. To renovate three buildings, the consultants added a 1 in front of the county’s estimates, as in going up approximately $10 million on a $6 million, $3 million, and $8 million job.
In another issue, Fryar asked why if it cost $107 a day to keep a prisoner in jail, the county was accepting $40 and $50 per capita from other government agencies to house their overflow. There are a number of possible reasons including bad business, and Fryar was leaning toward suspecting some of the numbers were not correct. To that, Holly Jones acted really put off and gave him a tongue-lashing.
