Down The Sewer Pipe – Politically Speaking

A week before I left my elected position on the Town Council at Friday Harbor in Washington State.  I placed all of the studies we had commissioned in the previous eight years, and I do not know how many there were, into two large paper grocery bags.

All together I possessed the equivalent of fouhundred thousand dollars in those bags, in nineteen hundred ninety nine dollars.  A lot of money and information in a single spot all paid for by they tax payers of the Town. To be sure these were just copies of the studies, all of the members of the council received a copy of the studies, but it struck me that with all of the money spent we had taken little action.

Friday Harbor Washington is not unique in this regard, that being: studies done, money-changed hands, no action taken. When we did a study about the sewer plant we already had a study on the shelf that the Town could have used. We did an additional study any way and acted on parts of it.  A new make up of the Town council, obviously unwilling to update an old study, commissioned a new study in the year 2006.  Not surprisingly it informed them of the same issues and the same actions were recommended.  As far as I can tell the only difference is the amount of money required to make the needed changes.

Portland Oregon, Podunk Iowa, Los Angels California, name a city or town and there will be unused but paid for studies on the shelves of the city or town hall. These studies are not cheap either because they run from twenty thousand dollars up to the millions.  The cost of studies depends on how much information is needed in them and the firm doing the work.  It seems a poor practice to me to ignore the information in these studies yet ignore them we did and others do.  One of my first lesions early on, as an elected council member, was the idea that a study could be used to decide on a plan of inaction.  You know, “this study reports that we can not afford the fix”.

So when you as an elected member of your community hear rumbling’s from the residents to the effect that “all government does is waste money”.  Consider the studies done in the past years and revisit them for updating instead of a whole new body of work.  Saves time, saves resources, and proves to the rank and file that you can husband limited resources in both good and bad times.

A road not often taken is to have a majority of the council commit to performing the actions that a study indicates needs to happen, prior to the study being commissioned in the first place.  In short do not perform a study if no action is going to be forth coming.

Sherman