You’ve all heard the term ‘self-fulfilling prophecy’.
As it turns out, New Castle County Executive Chris Coons’ tone-deafness on the issue of county services vs. the need for tax increases could have been avoided…IF Coons hadn’t embarked on last year’s public relations tour to convince the public and himself that everybody loved county services so much that they’d be willing to pay more taxes to support them.
Unfortunately, Coons’ cheerleading turned out to be so…last year.
Even if one stipulates that county residents love the libraries and the parks, which the Beast Who Slumbers does, and even if one stipulates that they’d be willing in theory to pay higher taxes to maintain these services, which ‘bulo would, the universe of people willing and able to pay 25% higher county taxes during these dire times likely approaches Absolute Zero.
And, unfortunately the caliber of county services does not extend to the supposed day-to-day ‘making the trains run on time’ stuff allegedly performed by the Division of Special Services, i.e. responding to constituent issues in a timely manner. There is a bitter joke about County Special Services, you have to be special to get services from Special Services. If you call your County Councilman’s office, they will sigh and tell you they placed the work order with Special Services. They just won’t be able to tell you when the work will be done.
County Executive Coons’ response to this problem? Give the Division a different name and promote its director (Tracy Surles) to his Chief of Staff. The Peter Principle at work.
County Council’s response? Agonizing over whether to cut their staff’s pay. El Somnambulo has a suggestion to the ‘leaders’ in County Council: Contact their state legislators and demand that legislation be introduced cutting THEIR pay and benefits by the same amount that state employees and state legislators are facing.
Failing that, the State should do the prudent thing. Today’s News-Journal features bleating from self-styled ‘character’, Councilman George Smiley: “I earn my money. I deserve my money, but I also have an obligation to partner with the county employees and everyone else to resolve our budget issues.”
Send that man a ‘waaambulance’! Someone should remind Councilman Smiley (who has the potential to become ‘Sheriff Mike Walsh’ someday) that he got elected after the Delaware General Assembly doubled the number of councilmanic districts in New Castle County. In other words, to a district half the size of previous councilmanic districts. As far as the Beast Who Slumbers can determine, the only demonstrable benefit, if that’s the proper word, to this has been to decrease the workload for the Council members themselves. But were their salaries halved? No. Is there any empirical evidence that county residents have gotten better service? No. Is there any empirical evidence that Council is no longer a bunch of slugs beholden to the developer community? Other than Lisa Diller, no.
So, to really save money in these most dire fiscal times, the State should do the right thing and reduce the number of councilmanic districts back from 12 to 6, with Council President serving as Councilperson-at-Large. If the Delaware General Assembly does this now, the change can be effected following the FY 2010 Census and implemented in time for the FY 2012 elections.
Now, ‘bulo is not an unreasonable man. If someone can demonstrate on this thread as to just why this idea makes no sense, please do so. The Beast Who Slumbers understands the argument that the districts had gotten just too big, but if there is no demonstrable evidence after 6-plus years that the doubling of council districts has done any good, then why should this costly experiment be continued? Better to cut their, and the taxpayers’, losses.