County leaders out of step in defending mosquito layoff,
tax increase
County officials did their best to convince a disenchanted group
of residents that taxpaying citizens would suffer no decline in
service to the mosquito abatement program as supervisors agreed to
lay off the specialist assigned to the duties.
County leaders out of step in defending mosquito layoff,
tax increase
County officials did their best to convince a disenchanted group of residents that taxpaying citizens would suffer no decline in service to the mosquito abatement program as supervisors agreed to lay off the specialist assigned to the duties.
County officials laid off the vector control specialist to save about $67,000 in the general fund. They set in course a plan to shift two agriculture commissioner’s office employees’ duties to split the vector control work, with one scheduled to spend 50 percent of his or her time on mosquito abatement and another set to spend 30 percent of his or her time on it.
Officials touted the move as a creative way to save money. All it was, in reality, was a disingenuous maneuvering of duties that is sure to cause a decline in service levels – all the while, as supervisors raised the tax designated to pay for mosquito abatement.
Of course, they had to tout it as such. It’s an impossible political sell to raise a tax – albeit, by just a few dimes for each property owner – and then turn around and acknowledge the services funded by that same levy would decline. Especially considering the issue at hand – controlling disease-carrying mosquitoes prone to spread such diseases as West Nile virus – will only worsen and has potential to inflict serious damage on a rural county like ours.
Supervisors raised the tax while noting how the program’s costs had risen due to the growing presence of mosquito-infested pools, especially those on foreclosed properties. The problem isn’t that county officials allowed the cost to increase. There was no way of preventing those additional inspections and whatever necessary costs come with them.
The problem is when county administrators and supervisors are naive enough to believe they can pull a fast one on the very citizenry that approved of the program on the ballot, prior to which many of those same officials had touted the effort’s importance and the luxury of having a highly-trained specialist such as Sean Miller overseeing it.
Now taxpayers are down to having two agriculture workers splitting the duties, finding the right portion of their days and weeks to ensure that citizens aren’t cheated out of a percentage point or two, or 10, or 20. That kind of system doesn’t lend itself to maximum efficiency, and probably nowhere near the sort of systematic, focused workload carried out by the now-defunct vector control specialist.
Even if the two agriculture staff members somehow find precisely the right mix to ensure the mosquito abatement services remain stabilized, then what happens to the duties those employees had handled before the transition?
Inevitably, there is a decline coming somewhere. Most likely, it will occur in the mosquito abatement program. Citizens would be better served by knowing that is the case. They would be better served with the truth, especially when they’re paying more from the pocket with expectations for something they might not get.
