Outside Hiring
I was reading in the Record Bee that the Board of Supervisors will have a discussion with Mr. Jim Steele, the Supervisor from Upper Lake, on hiring an employee at $130-$140,000 per year.
Jim Steele is a nice guy and he has a lot of good ideas but I don’t think this is one of them. First of all I think Scott De Leon is doing a good job and we should consider him, we could also consider other county employees that are capable. Mr. Steele’s position is that he wants to hire someone to get grant money. I think we should protect our own. We have plenty of retired employees that live in the County along with employees that already work for the county that are capable of getting these things done.
Jim Steele, even though he is a nice guy, he has government thinking; which is sometimes hazardous to your financial health.
We have retired county administrators and retired attorneys that are living in the county and I am sure they are not living high on the hog with their County retirement; and the ones that are working for wages at this time, I’m sure are not living high on the hog either. So if we make a deal with one of our retired or existing employees, as a separate thing, for 30-60 days, that would give them a major financial shot in the arm and would help the county, which includes all the taxpayers and the individuals.
Right now it is not broke why should we worry about fixing it and we won’t be stuck with a new employee that in 20-30 years will receive retirement at the cost of the tax payers and we could get the job done and help everyone.
Ron Rose, Lakeport
In proportion
Butch Murphey (RB 7-12) brought up an interesting point but failed to qualify it with proportional numbers.
In order to compare murders you need to compare populations as well. The number of murders in California, being 1,745, needs to be compared against the total population. California’s population (2014) was 38.8 million. Utah was 2.94 million and Arizona was 6.73 million. The above murders in CA would result in 132 in Utah and 302 in Arizona.
Actual numbers cited by Mr. Murphey were 49 in Utah and 304 in Arizona. Also not cited were gang related murders in Utah and Arizona. As California had 80 percent it would be important to know the stats in the other states, as gangs are more prevalent in urban areas and California has the highest concentrations. This would allow us to compare apples to apples.
Over to Mr. Murphey to get relevant information before complaining about California laws.
Kevin Bracken, Kelseyville
