The next Shelby County Commission meeting is Monday September 22nd. Shelby County, unlike Memphis, has their committee meeting on a different day so the next committee meeting is Wednesday Sept 17th. These committee meetings set the agenda for the following Monday. The committee meeting are held in the same building as the full commission except it is held on the 5th floor of the Vasco A. Smith Building. The only people who attend the committee meetings are grant-sucking parasites whose livelihood depends on such grants,lawyers or other government workers who must attend, and the occasional citizen that is a glutton for punishment...just kidding, these meetings can be not quite punishment...sometimes... I attend them when I can or I will watch online here...http://www.shelbycountytn.gov/index.aspx?NID=1218
Here is a link to the committee agenda...http://bit.ly/1wl21Wz
Oh man, I'm already out of motivation to read this common-core-informational-type-texts-that-would-drive-a-sane-man(orwoman)-crazy and I haven't even started...seriously, I need an assistant or assistants who would want to join me in doing some self-governance-type duties in deciphering this mumbo jumbo that is written in what my son's younger self would have called jibberish...he told me one time in his toddler years that he doesn't speak jibberish...well, I don't either and sometimes this government speak can suck the life out of you...kind of like the White House explaining to everyone that fighting ISIS (I call it ISIS not ISIL for a reason) is not a war but it is a war...that is if you speak jibberish.
I am going to try and make this as short (it's not short, only as short as I could make it) and painless as I can while trying to give you as much information as I can on this agenda. This agenda can be summed up like this...The government spends...the end.
While most of the items I'm going to mention below are not paid for out of general funds, it does come from taxpayer funds...whether from the state or federal level. No matter how benign-sounding some of these things are, these funds create bureaucracies that must be maintained in the future and eventually local communities will be responsible for these items in future budgets...
10:00 a.m. - Committee # 4 - LAW ENFORCEMENT, FIRE, CORRECTIONS & COURTS
2.Resolution to amend the FY2015 Operating and Position Control Budgets of the Shelby County Drug Court to approve and appropriate grant funds from the Shelby County Drug Court Foundation in the amount of $50,000.00 for the provision of Salary and Fringe Benefits for a Peer Recovery Specialist. This item requires expenditure of grant funds in an amount not to exceed $50,000.00. Sponsored by Commissioner Terry Roland.
So basically you have created a new government job, a Peer Recovery Specialist and here are the goals ...
Goals of this project are:
Goal 1: To promote, achieve and sustain substance use disorders recovery by providing funding
for training and one year salary for one peer recovery specialist who will deliver peer services in
Shelby County Drug Court.
Objective 1.1: To fund SCDC for certification training for a peer recovery specialist and for
mentoring expert consulting fees for the counselor in training.
Objective 1.2: To enhance and expand SCDC’s service array by adding salary support for
certified peer recovery specialist services for 6-month pilot with thirty-five clients.
Objective 1.3: Funding for evaluator expert to develop methodology and analyze.
Goal 2: To provide a mix of recovery support services that will help prevent relapse, promote
and sustain recovery, and encourage early relapse re-intervention for those with substance use or
co-occurring disorders issues and their family members/significant others in the focus
population.
Objective 2.1: To enhance and expand recovery support providers of the SCDC to deliver
recovery support services on behalf of the drug court participants.
Objective 2.2: For participants to gain the support and skills that will increase self-sufficiency
and psychosocial functioning, specifically in employment status, housing stability, and criminal
justice involvement.
Under the Budget and Finance Committee there is this gem...
3.An initial resolution authorizing the issuance of General Obligation Bonds and General Obligation School Board of Shelby County, Tennessee, in the aggregate maximum principal amount of not to exceed One Hundred Twenty Million Dollars ($120,000,000),
and here is an explanation...
I. Description of Item
This resolution is the initial authorization for the issuance by Shelby County
Government of general obligation bonds or short-term bond anticipation
obligations in an amount not to exceed $120,000,000.00 to finance public
works projects, including schools. This resolution only allows us to start the
process required for the issuance of debt. The amount represents the
maximum amount of new debt we expect to issue for the next two years.
I'll admit my ignorance on this one. I didn't realize that we go into debt to pay for schools. I thought they were paid for with taxes. Anyone that knows how this works, feel free to comment or send me an email.
11:20 a.m. - Committee # 3 - HOSPITALS & HEALTH
1.Resolution to approve a grant contract between Shelby County Government, on behalf of the Shelby County Health Department, and the State of Tennessee Department of Health, for the provision of Women, Infants and Children (WIC) and Commodity Supplemental Food Program (CSFP) Services in the amount of $29,832,400.00 for the period of October 1, 2014 through September 30, 2018, and to amend the Fiscal Year 2015 Operating Budget in the amount of $309,950.00 and the Position Control Budget in the amount of $169,609.00 and to appropriate said funds.
Society has convinced people that fathers aren't necessary, and society operates that way. That is, government becomes the daddy and we have to spend tens of millions of dollars supporting families with have missing fathers. The economical burden of this is evidenced above but the moral burden was on full display last week in the Kroger parking lot. Fathers are necessary and I can give you 30,000,000 reasons why and 3 Kroger employees beat until they were unconscious ...
Click this link to see the bureaucracy in it's full glory and how all this money is allocated. Tell me , how does the economy shrink, private business lays off and government grows and grows...like a wart that never goes away and only gets bigger.
http://bit.ly/1y3d4Ix
Also under the Hospitals and Health committee...3.Resolution to amend the FY15 Operating Budget in the amount of $80,600.00 and the Position Control Budget in the amount of $40,700.00 and to appropriate said funds awarded from the State of Tennessee Department of Health, for the provision of the Chronic Disease Management and School Health Promotion Services Program.
This money will go towards providing One (1) Public Health Outreach Specialist. So we have added to the bureaucracy and the expansion of government. The Service Goal for this position: To improve the health and well-being of individuals in Shelby County through improved nutrition, physical activity, and chronic disease self-management. Service Recipients: Tennesseans who live in OR VISIT SHELBY COUNTY. Ummmm WTH? You can just be a VISITOR to Shelby County and be a recipient?
For those dedicated enough to monitor your government, please click on the link and read the Service Description of what the duties will be for this job...Hint: there will be a lot of promotin going on...
http://bit.ly/1uCDbB1
Almost over, simmer down now...
11:30 a.m. - Committee # 6 - EDUCATION
1.Resolution to amend the FY 2015 Operating Budget to accept additional grant funds from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in the amount of $128,688.00 for the Head Start Program. I know the Head Start program and all who promote it mean well, but let me give you some analysis from the Obama Administration's own Dept of Health and Human Services study from 2010 regarding the success, or the lack of...I copied and pasted this from their study...In summary, there were initial positive impacts from having access to Head Start, but by the end of 3rd grade there were very few impacts found for either cohort in any of the four domains of cognitive, social-emotional, health and parenting practices. The few impacts that were found did not show a clear pattern of favorable or unfavorable impacts for children...and here is a link to their study...http://1.usa.gov/NDMjVT
So if there is no difference between the children who receive Headstart programming from the ones that don't, why continue shoveling money into this program? Hint: It has something to do with the government gravy train. Try to rock this boat, and like me at a committee meeting several months ago when I questioned this very thing, someone from the audience accosted me as I was leaving and accused me of not wanting to educate her grandchildren. If you fight something that is for "the children", you will be labeled a hater and a bigot. For the record, I want all children to be educated but I know that broken families, fatherless families, and the lack of nurturing/disciplining children is the reason they are falling behind and there is not enough money in the world to make up for this missing but essential component...Headstart? It's not working so what will they do? Continue to fund it and then the Mayor(Luttrell) and others will look for ways to expand it by eventually expanding services for Universal Pre-K because they have done so well with Headstart and K-12???
There is no way the following County Committee meeting will have this much poppycock on the agenda..(my 12th grade English teacher would be so proud that I used that word...even though I failed English, oh dang it, I must have needed me some Headstart...but then I passed German with straight A's..oh well, it's an enigma or some poppycock, I'm not sure which but I am sure I would get browny points for using both words...
Stay tuned...