As simple as this may sound, it astounds me that instead of giving all the facts together with an honest direction from our County Council and Administration, we are getting word salad. Sometimes it passes with little question because it’s phrased in such a manner to disguise the truth for whatever reason they have.

Monday night they tried to pass an ordinance, #661, to amend the budget for an additional $200,000, worded in such a manner for taxes for the government to do with as such as they see fit. During public comment, Bob Carrison announced directly that they already have more than $400,000 in a projected budget surplus for the fuel. The County Administrator was kind of enough to say what he said in his earlier email to me: ‘Ordinance 661 is a second reading budget amendment to provide additional funding to Fairfield Memorial Hospital. County Council is deliberating this matter per the request of Fairfield Memorial Hospital. All final decisions will be made on third reading (pass the listed amount, increase the amount or table the request).’

Now why that was not the ordinance to begin with is a real mystery to me. In the ordinance read Monday, not one word in the several sentences mentioned the word hospital.

That my friends is an underhanded ploy. We cannot tolerate employees who are manipulating the outcomes with word salad.

County Council needs to fire the Administrator immediately for willfully misleading the public. And that is not word salad.

Is it too much to ask for a council to be above board, honest, moral, ethical, principled, righteous, right-minded and factual all the time? That is why he is being paid 6 figures.

Jeff Schaffer

Dawkins