Surprises in the County Budget — $135,000 Range Hood!

The Warren County Board of Supervisors’ outrage on August 8th was a request for $135,000 for a range hood for the Senior Center. It came with only one bid and a lot of excuses. Why couldn’t they call around for commercial stock hoods used by every restaurant in America? Because they have already invested $6500 in engineering!  That’s the price of a reasonable commercial hood, and will now run the project over budget! That’s a personnel issue, not a reason to throw a hundred-thousand dollars away.

I am clearly missing something, but it’s on video, so you, too, can wonder why Board members didn’t come out of their seats and lay waste to the very idea of appearing without three estimates in hand.

And Ed Daley’s proposed new four-person assessment office is scheduled for a public hearing on August 22 (ref: my 5/8/23 rant).  After we add that to our tax bill, plus potential library litigation, and the increasing numbers of foster children, I’m sure we won’t even notice a customized range hood exceeding ten times the cost of a commercial stock item.

A look at the budget for social services suggests that their budget goes red in September, and the average cost per child in foster care is less than it was in FY-2020!  That suggests to me that we might have better uses for our tax dollars and perhaps our free time.

C.A. Wulf
Warren County

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