Real Estate Blog

PB County Commissioners are showing us how out of touch they are.

A few dozen private citizens took valuable time away from work to attend a commission this week because firefighters are trying to raise the sales tax by 16%. We did our homework, spent a lot of time getting our neighbors to come and we carefully rehearsed our speeches since we have only 3 minutes to speak during the public comments part of the meeting.

Once there, we had to sit through several proclamations where the commissioners recognized members of the state legislature who were in town. This was an ugly display of government officials posing for photos and congratulating each other on what a great job they are all doing.  Commissioner Aaronson commented on what a great job State Rep. Mary Brandenburg did getting red light cameras passed.  "It took eight years," Rep. Brandenburg said, "but we got it done."  Great job sticking it to the people, Mary.

Immediately afterward, Commissioner Aaronson announced that public comments would be cut from 3 to 2 minutes per person, since there were so many people there to talk. And not one of the other commissioners objected. They came to raise our sales tax by 16% and cut our allotted time to speak by a third. They eliminated 35 minutes of public comments and did not appear concerned at all by what they were not going to hear.

But they got to pat each other on the back for an hour.