People need to understand that it takes time to attend the various public meetings around the county. The amount of research involved to properly report on issues can be quite time consuming and expensive. The other problem with getting involved with issue after issue is a person gets burnt out, frustrated by the fact that most generally you can make public comment about the issue to what ever board you are involved with. But the fact is that the board may sit and listen to the public, but when it all boils down to taking action or acting on public input, generally the rule of thumb is thank you for your comment, we will take it under advisement, we will get back to you, or we will address it. All answers which usually mean nothing other than to blow you off. When fighting an issue it usually ends up that a person must hire an attorney to get any action. Unfortunately most people do not have the funds to hire a mouthpiece to represent them in our good ole boy court system here in good ole Columbia County.

Then there is the label that goes with attending meetings, making comments and addressing issues. Personally I could give a rats behind what people think of me or what they may call me. But to many other people they are afraid of being labeled as a troublemaker or other unbecoming labels that go along with the territory.
For example the Hospital debacle that was all preordained prior too and as soon as the people won the election in Nov. 2010. The county commissioners had their attorney looking for ways to make the ballot measure invalid, the county commissioners did not even try to enforce or uphold the measure. There were a few people including myself trying to do what they could to enforce the measure, paying for court recordings out of our own pockets time after time. But ending up on the advice of an attorney it could cost $50,000.00 to fight the health district on the ballot measure. None of us had the available funds to pay for the needed legal action. That is why we decided to run for the hospital board.

Unfortunately between the county commissioners, the health board and their taxpayer paid lawyers and believe me they hired the very best, they tied up what a new board could do prior to us being sworn in on the board.

We filed several different actions against the board for example a restraining order to keep the health/hospital board from selling the property and its contents on Gable rd. to the county for 1$ which in turn leases the property to the private non-profit public health foundation for 1$ all at a cost to us personally.  We went to one court hearing, was denied by the judge all before the health district filed any paper work but we were still ruled against, they had all their dirty deeds done by June 30^th 2011. They had everything final on the day before we were officially the new board. Leaving us with insufficient funds to hire an attorney to try and redo their actions, left with unpaid bills coming in etc. Their actions were legal although they were not moral. What money there was which totaled over $60,000.00 we could not get a hold of, the old board wrote the county two checks for the amount. The county claimed they did not know what the checks were for and refused to give the checks back to us because they claimed that they did not know if it would be legal to do so, except they did not seem to care if it was legal to accept the checks. The county held the funds from us for months, we wrote letters to them and had numerous conversations demanding they return our money to the health district coffers. About 1 week before the dissolution vote the county then returned the checks, time wise they rendered us incapable of taking any action. We could have charged up bills and then left the county holding the bag after the dissolution was approved, but we on the board felt that would not be right because the taxpayers would be paying once again and we felt that throwing good money after bad was useless and after the old board spent nearly $10 million enough was enough. We had contacted and met with several free consultations with attorneys and the answer was the same from them all, to undo what the old health board done it would have cost up to 1 million dollars and would take years to undo. We felt that we the voters forced the tax to be stopped and that was what the voters wanted. And hopefully the voters understand now what it takes to abolish a special district and a permanent tax. The next time the voters will be leery of creating a special district and any permanent tax.

We did not want to stop the dissolution vote costing the taxpayers for an election that would not be held, starting the tax up which would have had to be done by July 15^th. We would have had to do so in order to get funds and the public certainly would not have been happy with a move like that on our parts.

We tried to do an audit but could not do a full one because the private health foundation would not turn over all the public records that belonged to the health district, We wrote letters to the district attorney, the county counsel, letters and phone calls to the county commissioners and the attorney general office with out a response from any of them, thinking that we would have some pull after we were elected being the health district board and all. Not so. The county commissioners replied at times, we have no control over special districts, but they had their nose up our kazoo involving themselves in our finances.

People come up to me and say thank you for doing what you do, we need people out there like you to take on the corruption and fight for the public.

To this I say thank you, but my response to you is we need help and the usual answer is "oh I don't have time." Well people, you had better start making time, why do you think the whole country is in the trouble we are in right now? We are in trouble because we have allowed it to happen. It is time people get off their butts and start participating in their government. I understand fighting issues is not convenient but look what happened with the health district it cost YOU the taxpayers around $10 million dollars And a few of us had been fighting this issue for 7 years, countless hours and $$$. Get involved get educated on what is happening around your community and yes one person can make a difference.