Okaloosa County commissioners have refused to talk with constitutional officers about the budget and have turned a deaf ear toward them, even when the constitutional officers attempt to compromise. Is this any way to run county government?
This newspaper stated in a May 26 editorial (“Okaloosa’s budget impasse”) that the solution to the budget impasse is to reduce spending. How do you do that when the cost of living, the cost of gasoline, the cost of food and the cost of everything else continues to rise, and yet deputies and communications officers haven’t had a cost-of-living raise in over six years?
Vehicles that have more than 100,000 miles on them can be fixed and repaired only so many times. When your car gets close to 50,000 miles, you probably think about trading it in instead of trying to keep it running, don’t you?
Our sheriff thinks enough of our children that he put a deputy in every school. Folks have raised the roof disagreeing with that. But I’ll bet if one of YOUR children got hurt, you’d be yelling about why your child wasn’t protected!
What the county commissioners need to do is quit fighting with every constitutional officer who requests a budget increase. There’s a reason for those increases. It’s called reality. Machines and components wear out. People wear out.
How well would you sleep knowing that the commissioners cut the budget so much that the Sheriff’s Office can operate only from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. four days a week and not at all on weekends? That’s where it’s heading, folks.
— DALE BLACKWOOD
Niceville