THE GUARDIAN has been following the pablum getting spoon fed to the public on the Hwy. 20/26 jail/warehouse project. On the 29th of April at the state of the county program Commissioner Matt Beebe called it a temporary jail and will be a warehouse just as soon as they can muster the votes to pass a bond for $80,000,000.00 to build a mega jail facility. Also no mention of the operational costs and manpower costs for this facility has been made by any of the deciders that get to spend our money.
Now comes the County Commissioner Forums and Commissioner Steve Rule who is running for another term of office against Jim Rice and he says it will be a permanent jail.
Costs for this project in defined terms that the taxpayers can understand have never been consistent. The numbers are all over the place from a low of $3 million dollars to a high of $15 million depending on who is speaking at the podium or chairing the meeting.
It is time for the County Deciders to level with the public set a budget and stick to the numbers they budget. An answer to the costs for this project have not been defined and where the money to date has been spent a mystery. Canyon County has no line item for capital projects in their budget. They pull money out of the mattress after they decide how much to spend while in EXECUTIVE SESSION. No minutes, no record and no input or oversight from the taxpayers.
An audit of this project and the defined/budgeted costs are owed to the public. Transparency is sorely lacking on this project.
Word on the street is that the Citizen Lawsuit over incurring long term debt with this project with no vote of the taxpayers will hit the courthouse on Monday May 12th. It will be interesting to see how this moves through the Canyon County Courts and if the local judges disqualify themselves.
We continue with NO PLAN, no information, no oversight, and no agreement on just what the end product will really be in the final analysis. The only thing for sure is we are all going to get stuck paying the bills for the decisions that are made in the room we never get to see.
Saturday, May 10, 2008
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Does this mean that the jail has gone out for bid? Who has worked the numbers for the commissioners? Has it been the engineering firm, who has been paid a million dollars? Is it the architecture firm, who been paid several thousands of dollar? Who, who and where where, where? The commissioners are playing a shell game with taxpayer dollars. Matt Beebe, mister know it all, is relying on advice from Dave Young’s office is crazy. Steve Rule has no clue as to what’s going on and Dave Ferdinand is living a fantasy in his head. God help us all!
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