It’s time county tried looking forward instead of backward

Former Yamhill County Commissioner Kathy George sent a letter in today’s section taking Commissioner Rick Olson to task over a recent exchange with his colleagues.

Olson has suggested the county establish a clear set of long-range goals, conduct a professional study to address employee compensation concerns, commission a comprehensive facility needs analysis, develop a thorough capital improvement plan and overhaul the county website. His recommendations have been given short shrift by colleagues Mary Starrett and Stan Primozich, and Olson continued to insist on his requests. Frustrations on both sides finally boiled over.

It reminded us when Mary Stern was urging the county to modernize and streamline, but getting a reliably deaf ear from colleagues Kathy George and Leslie Lewis. If Stern was for it, George and Lewis seemed automatically against it.

When Olson won the seat over Allen Springer two years ago, dislodging the third member of an ideologically attuned conservative troika, he apparently ushered in the same kind of dynamic. Deja vu all over again, as former baseball manager Yogi Berra said in his famously fractured English.

We have repeatedly criticized the county for failing to engage in any meaningful goal-setting. How do you know you’re headed in the right direction if you’ve never set a course in the first place? Every agency owes its constituents a comprehensible set of goals.

Spurred by a perception its members were being underpaid, fueling burnout, turnover and resentment, the county’s main employee union went to the brink of striking last fall. What better way to shed some objective light on the issue, thus potentially defusing it, than commissioning a professional study by an outside consultant?

Long-range facility needs and capital improvement plans are staples of good private and public sector management at every level. Failing to plan ahead for potentially significant needs is irresponsible for any company or agency.

George suggests Olson harbors a “grandiose view of a new county government complex.” But his actual suggestion was simply that the county weigh a more centralized approach against spreading across a large swath of close-in neighborhoods, turning some of the city’s housing stock into a hodge-podge of government offices. We find much merit in the idea.

Against all that, modernizing the county website seems hopelessly overmatched. But what is that Olson’s colleagues find so objectionable about such a modest goal? Calling the current site “good enough” isn’t good enough for us.