Dear Editor,
I read The World’s article regarding SOVO funding in, almost, disbelief.
It seems our County Commissioners (BOC ) don’t feel they can spend $12,000 a year of OUR money to fund the veterans’ support group SOVO which has been providing vets a stable location for contact, group meetings, etc. Our county has only 62,000 people (including children) and over 9,000 of these are vets. Our BOC however has provided their new Forestry ‘citizens’ advisory committee with $50,000 to study the forest inventory. Why isn’t retiring County Forester Bob Laport being offered a reasonable sum to give a final update? Afterall , no one knows our forests better. The county trusted him for years to evaluate our forests and arrange timber sales.
Then there is the proposed $75,000 for a Governance ‘citizens’ committee’s use in deciding how our county should be run. Note: The options for running an Oregon county are outlined in the ORSs, online for free.
After attending BOC meetings for years and watching the commissioners summarily ridicule, ignore, tell citizens to sit down and shut up, belittle citizen input (even when they knew the citizen was knowledgeable) it will indeed be interesting to see who they pick to be on their ‘citizen advisory’ boards. I doubt it will be anyone who spent precious personal time going to the meetings and gathering information on how they function.
The BOC has, in the recent past, found funds for such items as: Court House new carpeting, tile ceilings, and lighting, plus county building retrofitting to natural gas which they say will sometime in the future reduce our energy costs ( after we pay for all the new natural gas appliances and boilers). Then there is the closed circuit television between Frances Smith’s Health Dept.office in North Bend and the BOC chambers. Also there are the Ipod’s for the commissioners (twice as the first did not do what they wanted.)
I now read our newest appointed commissioner, Messerle, wants approval to renovate the $750,000 newly renovated Owen Building so the commissioners can have larger offices.
A minimum of six additional “citizen ” advisory committees are being set up. This spending of our money is endless, but it doesn’t seem to be much for the citizens and nothing at all for SOVO.
Jaye Bell
Thanks, Ron, as I understood it when SOVO first began, the funds used to support SOVO came directly out of the VSO office budget. Consequently, not funding SOVO should be improving functionality at the VSO office here in Coquille.
My son has benefited greatly from the service provided to him by Mary Ann Sackett – she made a potentially painful process, during a time when my son and his family were all shell shocked, as smooth and easy as possible. My Marine thinks the world of her…
Forget funding SOVO. The County, as required by State mandate, has a Veterans Service Office with two County employees on staff and fully trained. Why doesn’t the BOC fund their own office and employees as much as possible before giving money for duplicate, and non-sanctioned, outside services? SOVO is all volunteer, and I applaud their committment. However, as with any outside private service, there are no safeguards in place that can assist the veteran who gets poor service or the wrong information.