At the county commissioners meeting January 19, former county commissioner Annette McGee asked for clarification about a consent agenda item. The item at question allowed the Director of Public Works (Charlie Butros) to "sign all pertinent documents and authorize the Public Works County Engineer to advertise, set bid dates and times, and award the contract." All of this power with the sole requirement that he come back to the Board with an announcement of which contractor had received the award.
In response to Ms McGee's question the Board members were caught flat footed. Mr Butros said that this process was in place to eliminate any back and forth involvement of the three commissioners which was just too time consuming. Further he said this had been done now for three or four years.
Ms McGee said this responsibility is the the job of the Board of County Commissioners and that we didn't elect the Director of Public Works. She asked that they reconsider this procedure and encouraged them to not shut the public out.
Yesterday's meeting provided further evidence to my Dec 19, 2009 posting "Staff Driven". Our county commissioners have sub contracted what we elected them to do. There are only three county commissioners. Public Works isn't a fourth county commissioner.
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
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The Public Works Dept operates as an independent agency, giving updates to the Commissioners. The TIPCAP seems to be the only citizen input, if you could call it that.
ReplyDeleteAt the end of Mr. Butros's brief, he asked at the 1/25/2010 meeting about the proposals for a $150,000 cost accounting system that Public Works plans to purchase. (It was pointed out that other county offices might benefit from the system, but rhetorically asked of the two Commissioners present if this was the first priority of the Commissioners for accounting software needs of the County. There was no answer from the Commissioners. Mr. Butros said he'd keep the comments made in mind.
As the primary blogger has noted the SOP, I suspect that the Commissioners approval to get quotes that were due in on January 20 was considered the OK to purchase. It isn't!!