That was District 3 Park County Commissioner Dave Wissel at the Bailey Town Hall on June 29, 2023.
“Ladies and gentlemen, it is my opinion we don’t have an income problem, we have a spending problem.” If anyone doubts Wissel actually said this, the video provides the evidence thrice, then slowed down then speeded up. I’d do it inside out and backward if that’s what it would take to convince some people that he actually said it.
Ahem.
Yet, since the county doesn’t have an income problem, why is it that our roads are in such horrible shape? Why is the Sheriff unable to serve and protect 24 hours a day? Is it because the county is dependent almost solely on property tax revenue for the wherewithal to do anything constructive for its citizens? Could it be the county relies nearly exclusively on the small government, no new taxes mindset of most of the political geniuses who’ve run the county for eons who just can’t see the forest for the trees?
Just running this up the flagpole, but could our lousy roads and inadequate public safety coverage be the result of a glaringly obvious neon-lit marquee over the entrance to 856 Castello Ave that reads: WE HAVE AN INCOME PROBLEM?
Wissel obviously believes we don’t, (or does he?) but consider this: If we don’t have an income problem, why is that the Constitutional Conservative, small government, wee taxes, and no new taxes majority on the BOCC now embraces the sales tax that funds the Land and Water Trust Fund as a source of INCOME to fund other than what the fund was established for? Specifically, Voila! half the income from that sales tax would be siphoned off and redirected to Road and Bridge. I tell you these folks are just giddy about the prospect of spending those sales tax dollars on road repairs.
Sure, like everybody else in the county, I know our roads are in pitiful shape, the paved as well as the unpaved. Mike Smith, Park County Director of Operations (including Public Works and Development Services), speaking at July 18, 2023, BOCC Work Session, opined it would take from $120 to $200 million to bring all of Park County’s roads up to par. Imagine that. And, what is the cost per mile to chip-seal a road? I may have misheard Smith, but I believe he noted $850,000 would be enough for about two miles of chip seal. And to rebuild a dirt road? $100,000 per mile?
That $850,000 was a grant BOCC Chair Amy Mitchell solicited from the feds, probably without considering Smith’s comprehensive plan for roads. To my knowledge, she didn’t even consult Smith who probably would have told her to hold up a minute, that grants have to be used in a specific amount of time, and to use those funds for what they were earmarked for would necessitate a restructuring of the schedule he’d been working on for months.
Let’s give Mitchell an A for effort and an F for intra-governmental communication. (She just loves the federal freebies, doesn’t she? All from Democrats, the tyrants of our age, socialists, and commies all.)
Road work in Park County is expensive. But, as Wissel says, we don’t have an income problem. Why then are our roads in such horrible shape?
Yeah, I know. Wissel said we have a spending problem. And, as he campaigned on, he’ll surely find a whole lot of misspent monies in the General Fund budget to take care of all the county’s glaring needs.
Or will he?
During the June 29 Town Hall, Wissel hemmed and hawed about his yet-to-be-established citizens’ budget review committee. That also was one of his campaign promises; to establish a We the Peoples’ committee to scrutinize the budget and provide input to the BOCC. When asked why he hadn’t yet established the committee he, yes, hemmed and hawed some more. He did say that he’s had help from both pre and post-election supporters with regard to the county budget.
So, he HAS established a budget committee. Not a committee that’s transparent as to membership, or inclusive of representatives who may not be ideologically aligned with him. But, rather, as he said, his pre and post-election supporters. The folks who think the sun rises and falls with the humble lad from Eads whose goal was to be a rock and roll drummer, but ended up a politician.
Wissel’s most ardent pre and post-election supporters are indubitably aligned with the South Park Outsiders who, among other things, offer Tactical Civics lessons at their meetings. A tenet of Tactical Civics is that the Civil War was nothing more than a smokescreen for the counterfeiting of money; i.e. money from a government printing press is unconstitutional, that only gold and silver are lawfully negotiable.
Think of that. To lay down chip-seal for two miles of road all we’d need is about 30 pounds of gold, or about 2400 pounds of silver.
I can see Amy Flint, our Treasurer remitting payment for road services via a wheelbarrow.
Silliness aside, Wissel’s pre, and likely his post-election supporters too, implied there were millions of dollars stuffed in a hidey-hole at 856 Castello Avenue, but most likely in Caribbean bank accounts close to the retirement home Dick Elsner was building for himself in Belize. (Truth matters here. Elsner is not building a house in Belize, and he probably doesn’t even have a passport.) Wissel and the South Park Outsiders even spent two hours with Sheriff McGraw listening to him explain his budget and his needs, but apparently didn’t hear a word he said. Indeed, SPO fellow travelers filled the anti-column of the Voters’ White Book for Amendment 1A with outrageous lies in 2022. 1A would have funded the Sheriff’s Department via a 1% sales tax to bring the department into the 21st century.
There’s Wissel, SPOers, Sheriff McGraw, and the Head Accountable of the South Park Outsiders discussing the Sheriff’s budget.
Wissel was also against the passage of 1A because, well, the county doesn’t have an income problem, and he would find all the money the sheriff needed in all those General Fund cubbyholes where millions had been hidden.
It’s instructive to note Wissel’s consistent answer when asked if he’s found the money to fund the Sheriff’s urgent and, in some cases, desperate needs. “No,” he says, “I haven’t found it but the prior BOCC has found money and Sheriff McGraw is in receipt of more money than any Sheriff in my 44 years in this county.” He’s ballyhooed that “there is enough money to fund 19 patrol deputies, 19 detention deputies, and 8 support staff including the Sheriff and undersheriff.”
Let’s all nod and give Wissel a knowing smile. Of course, the Sheriff’s budget has increased, just like most other departments’ budgets have increased. From year to year that is the general reality. No surprise there. Our own household budgets increase from year to year. His speciousness, though, in saying the Sheriff is “funded” for all those positions, belies the fact that the Sheriff can’t hire a qualified person to fill those positions because surrounding counties are paying at least $20,000 more as a starting wage for like positions.
C’mon Dave. We aren’t that stupid. We know smoke and mirrors when we see them.
Listen. Sure, let’s dip into the Land and Water Trust Fund sales tax monies to fix some roads. The plan is to take about a million bucks from the fund a year for the next five years. Hell, in those five years, we might be able to chip-seal, oh, I don’t know, maybe 15 to 30 miles of our roads. Or if we use it to reconstruct dirt roads, maybe 50 miles. (I’ve always been lousy at math, so if I’m not correct, please let me know.) By the end of five years, we’d still have more than, let’s see, a thousand to sixteen-hundred miles of roads left to fix. Nevertheless, I suppose any politician would take the credit. “Just look at what I did for our roads, for our county!!!!”
I don’t think it’s unreasonable to wonder why a supposed short-term panacea for road repair (not a panacea at all, but you know that) would be embraced by self-identified Park County Constitutional Conservative, small government, wee taxes, no new taxes ideologues as a bright idea whose time has come.
Well, maybe I do. For a politician whose reelection is coming up, it will be a nice talking point that will undoubtedly fool the gullible.
Let’s be honest. In a county where property taxes constitute the lion’s share of the budget, and is larger than the state of Delaware with less than 20,000 property taxpayers, has a helluva lot of federal land, and about 1700 miles of roads, do you honestly believe we don’t have an income problem? Do you honestly believe within the current general fund balance, the current mill levy enriched funds, with a grant here and there, and raiding a sales tax fund for one thing to be used for another, that there is enough money to adequately take care of the county’s needs? Do you really believe that?
If you do then I foresee a time when that lovely Land and Water Trust Fund sales tax (the only sales tax gleefully embraced by Wissel, Mitchell, and all the other righteous Constitutional Conservatives roaming the hills) will be used for any number of things: roads, public safety, personnel, infrastructure, technology, etc., etc., etc.
Or–what a great idea this is–when Wissel and Mitchell ask the voters to change the specific use of Land and Water Trust funds they shouldn’t identify just roads, they should just stick in some ballot language that, for example, would read:
WE UNDERSTAND THAT THIS IS A HELLUVA WAY TO RUN A COUNTY, BUT SINCE WE’VE GOT THIS ONE SALES TAX WE JUST ADORE, WE CAN USE IT FOR ANYTHING WE WANT TO, WHENEVER AND FOREVER. NO NEW TAXES IS OUR MANTRA, SO WE’LL JUST USE THIS PEACHY-KEEN EXISTING SALES TAX TO CONTINUE TO FOOL SOME OF THE PEOPLE MOST OF THE TIME.
“Their principal device [of politicians] is to search out groups who pant and pine for something they can’t get and to promise to give it to them. Nine times out of ten that promise is worth nothing. The tenth time it is made good by looting ‘A’ to satisfy ‘B’. In other words, the government is a broker in pillage, and every election is a sort of advanced auction on stolen goods.” – H.L. Menken
