Wednesday, February 20, 2002
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Wednesday, February 20, 2002 |
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Dunn: Planned project is 'phenomenal waste' By DAVE
HAMRICK
Greg Dunn says he is going to try and get his fellow commissioners to reconsider their decision to re-configure commission offices to allow room for a larger conference room. "It's a phenomenal waste of taxpayers' money," Dunn told The Citizen after commissioners voted 4-1 to approve the project. "I may get voted down again, but I'm going to have my say." Each of the five commissioners has a separate office in the complex, but Dunn said two of those offices are occupied no more than an hour a week, and two more only two or three hours. Moving the conference room will require tearing down and rebuilding several walls and will result in some of the commissioners' offices being increased in size as well, he said. And he said an estimate of $11,320 to do the work doesn't include labor costs and may be optimistically low even for materials. "We're going to at least get into the $25,000 range with this thing," he said, adding he doesn't believe the project is needed. The current conference room gets crowded from time to time, Dunn admitted, but said meeting room 212 is always available and will hold 50 to 60 people, or larger meetings can simply move to the public meeting room at the east end of the complex. Dunn spread his arms wide to indicate the chairman's spacious office and the commissioners' other offices. "We have better facilities than we deserve," he said. "We are supposed to be fiscal conservatives here. Plans are to build a new administration building in a decade or so, and the current complex already has been re-configured at least twice in the last ten years, Dunn said. "We certainly shouldn't squander any more money on this building." He added that commissioners earlier had set a priority of making more room for the county's Human Resources Department. "They're very crowded. They have a lot of storage of papers and now they're having to store them out in the hallway." If any re-configuring is done, it should be to provide relief to that department, Dunn said. He said he will bring the matter up for reconsideration at the commissioners' next meeting, Feb. 28 at 7 p.m. at the County Administrative Complex.
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