BOCC: Flower Proposes County Manager
Position Again: Gets Shot Down
Doktor Doom Wants Libs to Take Over the Board of Health

by George Gramlich,
News and Commentary

The drama continues. This March 30, 2023 Custer County Board of County Commissioners (BOCC) meeting had a few Broadway moments, but as usual, life goes on in Happy Valley.
The meeting started at 9 a.m. with the usual suspects all present: Chair Kevin Day and members Bill Canda and Tom Flower in all their ranger rocket three musketeers power thrones. There were a lot of peasants in the gallery as the Agenda had “County Manager” (CM) on it which us taxpaying serfs don’t want. Sort of unexpected like. And guess who put it there? Traitor Tom.
Canda was first up under Commissioner Items saying he had his team there that he put together after he was assigned to look at options other than hiring an expensive County Manager. He said they were ready to discuss where they were at. (Canda brought the team there because Flower had put County Manager on the Agenda. Canda and his team were not done with the research and were going to present it at a later meeting but Flower is trying to sabotage his efforts by forcing a vote on hiring a CM at this meeting. Flower is counting on Day going with his move to hire a CM. But will Day go along? Stay tuned.)

Flower is next. He talks about some courthouse sidewalk grant waste that he is working on.
Day opens the floor to Public Comment. Like some repeating nightmare that won’t go away, guess who speaks up first? A large man in the front row with a big white beard and a yellow writing pad starts to speak with that whiny, lib pitch that sounds like goats crying: Yup, our very own local Dr. Fauci, James (Dr. Doom) Gilbert. (Remember Dr. Doom is some sort of virus expert who has lived off government money one way or the other for his whole working life and he is a prominent member of our local lefty loony group, the Custer County Democrat Party which wants to tax us out of existence and steal our children. Doom, does indeed, have some creds.)
So what is the subject of Gilbert’s speech? He and his lib homies want to take over Custer County’s Board of Public Health! (BOH) (What!) Yes, Doomy says the fact that the BOH board is comprised of the our three commissioner musketeers is BAD and they don’t know what they are doing. Gilbert wants to replace the board with “people with expertise in the field” and other ‘non-political’ locals (i.e. registered dems) who can make decisions without politics involved. He says the muskies ignored state recommendations in the Covid fiasco and they let “politics” influence their decisions. (Thank goodness. Remember when the WuFlu hit and the old BOCC members did some panicking. New commissioners came on board and we got Dr. Cliff Brown as the BOH Director. Brown asked Gilbert, who is a self proclaimed expert in viruses, to help him out a bit. In the BOH meetings, Brown took a common sense approach to quarantines, shots, masks etc. while Gilbert consistently tried to undermine Brown’s positions with extreme measures like shutting down the whole county, shots for everybody, masks 24/7, travel restrictions, tracking everybody’s movements, on and on. Seeing the data that has come out the last 18 months, Doom Boy was WRONG about everything. Another case of emotional decision making by a control freak lib.)
Doom goes on and on about “politics has no place in health policy.” (Wrong again. Health policy is driven by politics and lenged control freaks like Doomy on that board is an invitation to tyranny. Period. We want our BOH accountable to the people and that means have the elected commissioners to be the board members.)
There was no Unfinished Business so New Business was next.
In the discussion about Accounts Payable and Payroll, Flower brings up a somewhat strange request. Our Information and Technology head, Vernon Roth, is putting in a lot of approved overtime in helping the Fremont Dispatch Center (FreCom) install its new computer system here in the county. (For our Sheriff’s Office, Fire Departments and EMS) This pay is coming out of the county’s budget. Flower says he would like to charge the SO for it instead of the county. (This was NEVER brought up when it was discussed.) Flower said he is not going to make a motion on it but “just wants to bring this up.”
Day said he will talk to the Sheriff about this. (Flower knows the SO budget is super tight. And they never budgeted for this item. Why is he wanting to slam the SO with this big dollar hit?)
The Office of Emergency Management’s (OEM) report was the next subject. The OEM head, Robyn Knappe said the “381 Plan” that was submitted by the prior OEM director (and done by a paid contractor) was accepted at the state level but the FEMA feds rejected it as it was missing some items. She said they are doing a 40-page revision and will resubmit.
The next Agenda Item was Consideration of Hiring a County Manager. Flower makes a motion to create a CM position and hire “an individual for that position”. (A “motion” needs a second to be able to discuss it. No second, no talkie. Flower is anticipating Day will second it as Day was the guy who originally brought this up many moons ago.)
Day says, “I don’t believe I am at that point yet.” (Killing Flower’s motion. Flower immediately gets all dark and huffy. But folks, parse that sentence: Day said “yet”. Is Day going to go down that bad road someday?)
Canda then talks about his task of researching options to a CM position and how his team is doing so far. (Flower knows Canda is working on this. Flower was hoping Day would fold and undercut Canda’s findings. Reason: Nobody, and especially Flower and Day, has made ANY kind of case for this completely wasteful position. NONE. And Flower knows that Canda’s team will not recommend a CM.) Canda says they are working on a plan and would present it soon. (Basically, they want to hire a consultant who specializes in small government/business entities and leadership issues to study what, if any problems there are and propose solutions. Plus have the team members research and comment on alternatives. This is what should have been done in the first place.)
Flower, all huffy puffy, says, “point of order here. My motion dies if no second. Correct? Then lets move on.” Canda says he has a good team assembled for this. Flower goes sulky. Canda then suggests a workshop when the team is ready to report.
Local real estate agent and former BOCC commissioner Bob Senderhauf then speaks against hiring a CM as it is “a waste” of money.
Next item was appointing local counselor and coach Troy Baumgardner to the Attainable Housing Board. For some reason this sets off Flower who bloviates about the meaning of “attainable” and other esoteric items. After much waste of time, Troy is
approved.
The next spot was accepting the resignation of our Veteran’s Service Office head Jared McClain. (The poop on the street is that he resigned as he was having big problems with working with our local American Legion Post 170 and that friction was so bad he quit.) All three muskies do their “I’m so sorry to see him go” routines with Flower of course moaning the worst.
After that love fest, the Post 170 Commander, Ted Ballard spoke from the gallery. Ballard said they saw that McClain was having problems working with the Legion and he didn’t know the reason. Ballard said McClain “was hostile to us.” Ballard wants the BOCC to force the VSO to work with the Legion and the VFW via the position’s job description. Ballard noted that the Legion went to talk to him and McClain accused the Legion of being “too political”. Ballard went on and on, quite defensively, trying to explain the bad relationship. Day tried to stop him a few times but Ballard kept on. Finally he stopped.
Opening the bids for the equipment/vehicle process was next. This was painful to watch. Flower could not stop talking. There were 40 bids. We will spare you.
The Painting of the Courthouse bid was the next item. Only one bid was submitted. This, of course, caused a big talk fest. Canda said the labor rate was fine. After too much time, it was approved.
Another day in Happy
Valley….