GT County Road Commission 6/13 Meeting - My observations - Where'd the money go?

"I'll be the first to admit, I have a lot to learn about local government, but what I do know is how to manage a business. Businesses and municipalities such as this need their board of directors or board of commissioners to approve their budget and report to them when actual income and expenses deviate from the budget. Since the only financial reports available publicly are from 2022, that is where I started.

In the 2022 budget, they planned on spending $3.4M on snow removal, but actually spent $2.5M. The GTCRC employees could not answer to my satisfaction where the $900k "Mother Nature" savings went. One said it was spent on operations and sand, the other said it was still in the bank account. When I look at the 12/31/22 Balance Sheet, the cash on hand was $10,972,125.

Why do they keep asking for more taxes when "Mother Nature" gifted them $900k in the '21/'22 season? I'm looking forward to seeing the 2023 Audit which should be available next week.

The board packet available online was not what the commissioners reviewed. Their packet was approximately 50+ pages and included data from the analysis of our county roads, most of which was conducted last September. The public does not have access to those reports on their meeting site. GTCRC Meetings Agenda. They are also behind on posting meeting minutes. The last minutes posted were from the 01/11/2024 Special Meeting.

There was much discussion about the condition of the subdivision roads' deterioration. Commissioner Underwood suggested simply grinding the worst of them and replacing them with gravel roads. Luckily, Commissioner Kazim opposed that idea, stating that people pay taxes for roads, and the most important road is the one in front of their homes. People want their roads fixed, not graveled over.

Regarding the condition of our Main, Local Through, and Subdivision roads (how they categorized them), our main roads are at 84% (excellent) compared to others in the state, our local through roads at 70% (?), and subdivisions only at 54%. Commissioner Kazim suggested that we let our main roads go down to 70-75% and put more resources into our subdivision roads, including cost-sharing with the townships that are receiving repairs. The GTCRC employees pointed out that it would cost more to keep the main roads maintained if they were allowed to slip.

Should I be elected as your GT County Commissioner in District #1, I will emphasize "Needs" over "Wants". Since deciding to run and paying close attention to what's happening in our local government, I see a lot of wasteful spending. Some of the county commissioners would like to spend over $100M on the Hart-Hammond road bridge; others would love to build a new County Services Campus behind what is currently the County Services Building on LaFranier. I can only imagine such a campus would cost tens of millions of dollars. Those are "Wants" of the BOC, not the "Needs" of the people they are supposed to serve. I would suggest the BOC add funds to each township to help with cost-sharing of road repairs rather than increasing already high property taxes.

Vote Local!