Amy Mitchell waffles–uncompromisingly adamant to well, maybe we oughta…
There’s Dave Wissel at Bailey Days, June 25, 2023. His compadre asked me if I wanted a smile, I gave a thumbs up, and look at that sunbeam!!! My father would have called that a shiteater…
Then came the Tuesday, BOCC general meeting of June 27, 2023. But wait! There’s also a snippet of the BOCC general meeting a week before.
Commission Chair Amy Mitchell attended Bailey Days on Saturday. As she says, she “…had a lot of community interaction” in Bailey with regard to the BOCC’s submission of a worthless piece of paper she’s characterizing as a bid. It wasn’t a bid. It was ipso facto rejected as non-responsive to the requirements of the School Board’s RFP for the sale of the Rosalie property. The RFP required a minimum bid of $875,000 for the document to even be considered in the competitive process. The county’s bid was $825,000, missing the minimum requirement by $50,000.
Yet, for some reason I cannot wrap my mind around, Mitchell and Wissel believe if we were privy to their executive session discussions regarding the BOCC submission of a proposal we’d all understand. There would be no further questions.
But, there are questions that the executive session recording may answer: Why did the BOCC offer the School Board a worthless piece of paper? And why do they believe that a worthless piece of paper constituted a bid?
And, I’m still wondering how it is that Mitchell is so confused about the basics of the RFP process. For example, she appears to be surprised that the School Board made all the bids public. For a public, taxpayer-supported entity NOT to make RFP responses public would raise all kinds of flags. Right? We know that. Why doesn’t she?
Certainly, it is appropriate to shield proprietary information included in an RFP response–trade secrets, for example. But as straightforward as the RFP was, why is there a sense it would not be made public?
As a brief aside, more egregious than a property tax-supported public entity not making RFP responses public, is a property tax-supported public entity awarding and/or renewing contracts without bidding–no-bid, sole source contracts. Perhaps even more egregious than that is when, for example, the board of a property tax-supported water conservancy district, whose president is a sitting Park County Commissioner, and whose wife is the secretary of the board, contracts with the secretary of the board, the president’s wife, who owns a private company to provide services to the board. Here’s the story. For a more in-depth look at the machinations of water conservancy districts in Park County, here’s that link.
I think we’re all a little weary of this topic. Certainly, Mitchell is. But she thinks as she notes in the video, that the community just doesn’t understand; that, hell, she’s got all the answers but the community just doesn’t want to listen. She says the community just didn’t take the time to read and understand the RFP. And, maybe her attitude is, Hey, we made a decision, get over it.
Wisssel, of course, opines that there’s been a lot of community comments not based on fact. Really? Well, I suppose some comments have not been factual, but a whole lot of them have. Of course, Wissel does have a tendency toward bombast; the louder his voice, I suspect the more factual he perceives himself to be. The softer his voice, I suspect the more sincere he perceives himself to be. Whether or not everyone is fooled all the time by his demeanor is unknown.
There’s a great deal of effort going on to change the narrative about this issue. Kind of like Trumpian diversions designed to redirect the focus from the truth. And, of course, politics being politics, diligence is required to separate the wheat from the chaff, to know gaslighting when you see it.
In any event, the BOCC Town Hall is in Bailey tonight, at the Crow Hill Fire Station, from 6 – 8 PM. It’s located at 153 Delwood Drive, in Bailey. And you should know that there is parking along Delwood Drive if the fire station’s lot is full. It should be interesting.
