by George Gramlich,
News and Commentary

C uster County’s mighty Three Musketeers (i.e., our County Commissioners) opened their Custer County Board of County Commissioners (BOCC) November 11, 2022, meeting a few minutes after 9 a.m. All three muskies were in their regally appointed throne room: Chair Kevin Day and members Bill Canda and “Traitor” Tom (“TT”) Flower.
Day and Canda gave brief Commissioner Comments while Traitor Tom spent a LONG time on his most recent excursions into the local political world of mindless government meetings.
First up in the Throne Room was local Chris Bryson. Chris gave a nice presentation on his Forest Restoration Initiative which was about “smarter mitigation” of our local forests. He said it is possible to recover 80 to 90% of the biomass in a mitigation project and instead of concentrating on cord wood, Chris said using the biomass for pellets and briquettes is the way to go. He would like to start up a non-profit corporation for this and employ local veterans. Chris said a pellet making machine is needed. He asked the muskies if they would hold a workshop on this. The muskies did not indicate whether or not they would hold a workshop on this.
Next up was Planning & Zoning with a request that the Murphy Short Term Rental application be accepted. The Planning Commission voted to ask the muskies to accept it. The motion to accept passed and the STR was approved.
Day was next and he brought up creating a new position in the county, that of County Manager. (This has been discussed on and off for years.)  Day said “he sees a need to have a position like this in the county”. It would “help with policies and procedures as well as budgeting”. (Strange, the muskies started a big policies and procedures push a while back. I guess nobody got that done. Also, Finance has a new computer system that is greatly helping the budget process and Finance/HR guy Braden Wilson is doing a great job there.) Day then talks about a spreadsheet he has with what other County Managers are getting. He said they start at $63K per year and the average is $117K. He says they run the day-to-day operations of their counties. (Isn’t that what our department heads
are for?)
TT, who almost looked like he was salivating at this bureaucratic spending tsunami, then jumped in with, “I have been pushing for a county manager for two years”. (TT loves big government.) Our regal sage then stated, “I believe we need one. We can’t afford not to have one. Especially for policies and procedures”.
(Muskies: it is possible, you know, to hire a contractor to come in here to do the “policies and procedures” which somehow you guys can’t get done, for fixed price. And then he would be gone. This way we wouldn’t have a person sitting in an office we don’t have and eating up around $100k (with bennies) in tax payer money twiddling his fingers all day. We have a TINY government here in Happy Valley. Instead of attending absolutely useless government Zoom meetings all the time, how about doing something productive, like policies and procedures?)
It is now muskie Canda’s turn. He said “the citizens elected us to manage this county. This cedes our authority to one guy. We are responsible for our departments”. He said we would be taking $60k to “hire somebody to do our job”. (Canda is ABSOLUTELY correct here.) He then said, “we need to use that money to pay more to our employees”. (Folks, cops and roads should be the NUMBER ONE PRIORITY for our tax money. And currently the highest priority is giving the Sheriff’s Office a lot more money to keep and retain GOOD deputies. We can not retain deputies here on what are paying right now. Adding another layer of local bureaucracy to our tiny government now instead of laying big bucks on the SO doesn’t make much sense. In fact, it makes no sense.) Canda then stated I am, “against this right now.”
Canda then introduces local realtor and former Commissioner, Bob Senderhauf. Bob tells the story of when Happy Valley had a County Manager. This was like WAY back. (Like maybe horse and buggy days? Sorry, Bob.) Bob said they hired one with state money and when that dried up they eliminated the position.
Canda then stated the obvious, that, “our departments can do what needs to be done. I don’t want to waste taxpayers’ money”. (Canda appears to be the only fiscal conservative Muskie. Odd, they all are “republicans”.)
Day then brings up the policies and procedures boogeyman again with, “We haven’t made any progress on policies and procedures.
I see a need to help with policies and procedures”. (Again, hire a consultant to do them and then get rid of him. So we don’t have a guy chewing up a $100K every year.)
TT then tried to take a cheap shot at Day and Canda and goes back to him being in the county building more than them saying, “You need to be here day to day to see all the things that need to be done…”. (Each Muskie is there one day a week and also at other times. And folks, we are talking about a relatively small building with a small staff with a bunch of department heads and other elected officials present. Between the Muskies and everybody else in the building they can’t get things done? They ARE getting it done. Again, maybe the muskies should lay off the Zoom gov gab fests and put some time into things like policies and procedures.)

Traitor Tom, puffed up like a grouse in heat, goes all hoity toity and says, “We were hired to govern the county and not manage it”. (Earth to TT, a good part of governing is managing, especially here in Custer County. Canda is the only Muskie that has actually managed large entities and he knows how bureaucracy can grow.)
Canda responded saying the county commissioners “by statute” have to manage and that we each have “departments to manage”. (TT must have forgotten that little tidbit.) Canda went on about how this needs more thought and we shouldn’t vote on it today. He said we are “too small to need this. Only 4,500 people here”. (Small government is good government. Canda is totally correct again.)
There is some discussion on how this would work. They then agreed to discuss this further in the budget meetings and also put the subject on the November 30, BOCC agenda.

And that was that….