Evo didn’t get her daily walk last night because I had to sit at the four-hour Buncombe County Commissioners’ meeting listening again to how these people love dogs and want to make sure they get adequate exercise . . . . During the rehash of this and other subjects, I felt like the kid in the Subaru commercial that says, “Move it! You’re killing me!”
There was a lot of thinly-veiled partisan sniping. A real reporter would do due diligence, but since I’m just a drive-by, I must content myself to say both sides were working with different sets of facts, and I don’t know whose numbers and whose interpretations were better. Perhaps the comment most worthy of choking on one’s gum was Commissioner Ellen Frost’s. She said she was not going to let somebody’s interest in making money off their property interfere with the beautification efforts underway by a neighborhood group.
Other than that, the amendment that would require horses to have manmade shelters was put to rest. Republicans indicated the ordinance was outrageous from the get-go, and Democrats said the disaster was part of a sausage-making process that produced a better outcome. Mike Fryar referred to the last-minute addition of horse directives to an ordinance intended to prevent cruelty to dogs as a dog and pony show. He also made sense when he objected to the county’s intention to spend $500/sq. ft. building an indoor firing range.
Lisa Baldwin said everything I repeated from the county about the DHHS expansion was incorrect. I hope to have time to investigate once I get a stack of deadlines and a family emergency in Detroit to a better place. Baldwin argued the state and federal government only had guidelines, not mandates, on how much workspace employees needed. County Manager Dr. Wanda Greene said not so. Greene said shifts at the Coxe building ran from 5:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m., having to power down nightly for system updates; Baldwin said the county should introduce shifts there and extend hours for the public. Baldwin said nobody had been forced to comply with the guidelines; Greene said the county risked forfeiting more than $20 million in administrative reimbursement if it did not comply. Greene said new debt for the capital improvement plan would be integrated into the budget with insufficient changes to debt service to justify a tax increase. Baldwin said the debt was planting the seeds for a hike.
