BOCC: American Rescue Plan Grant:
Another Flower Power Show

by George Gramlich,
News and Notations
The April 29, 2022 Custer County Board of County Commissioners meeting was held in the royal musketeer’s throne room and started at 9 a.m. All three muskies were present: Chair Kevin Day, and members Bill Canda and Tom Flower.
After the muskies wowed us (especially Flower) with all the productive and truly worthy government meetings they attended (via in person, or more frequently now, via Zoom) since the last muskie episode, the big show was up: doling out the $870,000 O’Biden slush fund American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) that the county was awarded. Who gets this O’Biden vote bribe money? YES! The peasants of Happy Valley! Socialism at work in Custer County.
Last year the muskies set up a stellar committee composed of exemplary local citizens to review applications for money from the ARPA grant. The committee Chair is Andrew Zeller. The committee set up a criteria list to review the applications. They spent an enormous amount of time interviewing, researching and processing the applications. Most of the committee was at the meeting with Zeller leading the presentation. Zeller sat in the sacred guest chair in front of the gilded, gem encrusted muskie conference table.
Zeller announced that the committee had received 51 applications for the money. They declined 19 and approved 32. Twelve of the approved ones were only ok’d for part of the money they requested. Zeller stressed that the gold
grade committee UNANIMOUSLY approved the lucky 32. The total amount approved was $860,267.39 which left about $10k in the slush kitty. Zeller noted that the county has only received about half of the $870k and the rest should be arriving late May.
The muskies then start jousting about how to proceed. Day and Canda want to vote to accept the committee’s decision in whole but Flower, of course, wants to review, in detail, EVERY application before making a vote. (Which is simply repeating what the committee has been spending months on.)
Flower starts making waves saying “I can’t imagine us throwing a blanket over this and voting on the whole thing. I have all kinds questions. I am surprised you guys don’t. Canda says that’s the job we charted the committee to do. We shouldn’t be doing it all over again. Day concurs.
(If they vote to approve the whole magilla, Flower won’t be able to micro pick the applications and waste a ton of time. So he is not a happy Flower now.)
This goes on and on about whether they should be “getting into the weeds” (where The Flower blooms) or accepting the learned judgement from the committee. Flower says he has problems with two or three of these (this grows later, or course) and he WON’T vote to approve the whole package. (Day looks worried. He might have to somehow appease Flower so he doesn’t make a
scene again.)
Canda makes a motion to approve the whole package. More discussion ensues. Flower insists on weed picking the ones he doesn’t like. Regrettably, Chair Day, instead of agreeing with Canda and voting to do the whole package, tries to appease Flower and asks which ones are you having a problem with. (BIG mistake. The pandora’s box is now opened and we are treated with a 1.5 hour Flower Power dissection of three then four applications involving Zeller, the rest of the committee and all the muskies. 90% of the time is spent with Flower just going here and there with utterly worthless questions and self obsessed commentary.)
This bantering goes on and on and on. Flower says he has “angst”. (Folks, you all know that one very, very important leadership quality is the ability to delegate. Another is the ability to trust the work your fellow workers, employees, etc. perform. Flower can’t do either. We have seen this big time since he was elected. The county has suffered greatly for this. You cannot find better people than those who are on this ARPA committee. Canda and Day recognize this. Flower doesn’t. If it isn’t about The Flower, then it will be Sad.)
To avoid reporting in detail on the insanity level that this “discussion” reaches, let’s just say Flower doesn’t like applications C3, C17, C20 and C4 and Canda and Day finally agree to remove them from the motion to approve the committee’s recommendations. (So Flower doesn’t have another epic hissy fit in front of everybody.) A further complication is that the county won’t get the rest of ARPA money until late May, so they agree to do the final OK after the money is in the bank. So, during May, Flower wants to dissect the actual applications of the ones he doesn’t like (and repeat what the committee just spent months doing). He then lectures the world on how this process works, how it doesn’t work. On and on. Day and Canda just sit there in disbelief. But–situation normal for muskie Flower. The Flower Power Hour again shows us where the “weeds” are.
Tha, that’s all folks.