Forget talking trash
What could you buy with $825,000? You could buy a full-page ad in the Marion County Record every week for the next 25 years and still have $6,000 left over to spend on ads in other newspapers.
You could buy gift subscriptions to the Peabody Gazette-Bulletin for 1,000 friends for each of the next 30 years and have $75,000 left over for the best Hallmark gift cards and expensive postage..
You could buy each member of a family of four a Quarter Pounder with Cheese value meal at Hillsboro McDonald's twice a day, every day for the next 74 years.
Or you could pay for one extremely serious mistake the Board of County Commissioners made several years ago in giving an exclusive contract for garbage transfer to the cronies of one of the then-members of the commission.
And if you think this mistake was costly, wait until you see how costly the mistake to assume responsibility for the old landfill near Aulne proves to be.
We have yet to learn the lesson that the county should not be in the trash collection, transfer station, or landfill business. That should be left to professionals who will pay big bucks instead of politicians who bind us to costly long term contracts.
After the county buys the transfer station, helps build a four-county landfill, pays for properly closing the former landfill near Aulne, pays legal fees, takes property off tax rolls, maintains, manages, and fails to receive services formerly offered — forget talking trash. Let's start talking bankruptcy.
— BILL MEYER
