Anyone interested in watching this committee first hand and perhaps having the opportunity to speak when the attending public are invited to speak ought to attend the governance advisory committee meeting tonight at 6PM at the Owen Building in Coquille. The committee is investigating possible changes in the way Coos County conducts business with the public that may require adding two more commissioners and/or a move to home rule. Any changes of this nature would require a vote of the people and it is next to impossible that anything will be placed on the upcoming Spring or November ballots giving the county plenty of time to first elect a new commission.

The structure advisory committee has apparently been interviewing the employees and department heads and asking some hard hitting questions like –

How long have you worked for Coos County?

What would make you and your staff’s job easier?

and

Are there things you are required to do that you think are just plain silly? (like answering this questionnaire)

Elite members of the structure committee believe the “luxury” of evaluating these questionnaires and conducting the interviews puts them in the privileged position of knowing something about how the county runs that the rest of us don’t know or are incapable of understanding. They are sort of the Seal Team 6 of the advisory committees, gathering intelligence with which only they have the surgical experience to execute the mission of “fixing” what’s wrong with each department. Actually, they first have to decide what it is that’s wrong.

Committee members Jon Barton and Al Pettit boast about their skills and certainly speak with an authoritative manner, however both are very divisive personalities. Has anyone actually vetted either of them and run a background check to verify their experience or past job performance? For example, Barton made several claims on a public access channel interview recently regarding LNG that are provably false and Pettit certainly believes he knows a lot about something and a lot of words come out of his mouth but he has yet to impart that knowledge in any of his public statements. Do either of them have any government experience beyond sitting on a couple of boards?

Does anyone know how much these interviews and experiments are costing the county in time and labor?