Friday, February 17, 2017

There's No Deficit...Of Stupidity

It just doesn't get any simpler than this:

Spreadsheet errors cost Clallam $494,157

Gosh, and you mean to tell me Selinda wants to quit working within such a well-oiled operation? With such a crack team? Jeepers! Why, who'd wanna step away from that sort of...

Errors on a pair of Clallam County Sheriff’s Office budget documents will cost the county $494,157 in 2017, officials said this week.

A $331,074 Excel spreadsheet calculation error was made on a sheriff’s operations salary worksheet during the annual budget cycle last fall, commissioners learned Monday.

A $163,083 spreadsheet error was made on a sheriff’s jail salary worksheet, officials said.

 
Now, even in Clallam County - which, budget-wise, has never exactly put the count into county - even there, I would never expect 100%, to-the-penny accuracy. That is a nearly impossible standard. But surely...Surely it is not too much to hope that they might notice errors such as these when they were still in the thousands of dollars range...Or even the tens of thousands of dollars range...As opposed to the hundreds of thousands of dollars range.

Because, as Chief Accountant but-strangely-speaking-as-a-private-citizen Stan Creasey had to point out:

"This is a really big number."

 
I guess, again, using Clallam County standards, we could see this as the Sheriff's Office really (no pun intended!) excelling. After all, as you may recall, the Auditor's Office recently "lost" around 200 ballots. Pikers! Leave it to the manly men of the Sheriff's Office to show you what "running up the numbers" really looks like in Clallam County.

My favorite definition of comedy is this: Comedy is tragedy that happens to someone else. Given that I now live well away from Clallam County, boy, does this strike me as funny. For local residents, on the hook for the money one way or another...Probably not so funny.

Anyway, let's end it with a little more from Mr. Creasey...

During public testimony the next day, Creasey asked commissioners to ponder two questions: Would the board have made different budget decisions had it known the “true magnitude” of the projected deficit, and who will be accountable for the mistakes?




  

16 comments:

  1. Again, incredible!

    Yet again, "Telling the truth about one of the worst places on Earth..."

    Sure. No place is perfect. Nobody expects perfect. Perfect would be boring. But this constant stream of idiocy is not what I want in a town.

    As you said, the mind reels. There are SO many crazy things that have happened here within the last 12 months. From Gavel 'em Down Cherie Kidd's meltdown that has resulted in a virtual denial of expressions of free speech, to today's revelation that that our government employees can't do basic math, and it is costing us big money.

    People really need to know what this place is about, before they move here and get trapped. Like so many of us.

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  2. I'm sorry that the font and formatting on this post doesn't match all the others...For whatever reason, it will not allow me to change it to actually match, so I'm going with the slightly bigger font as a fallback. I mean, geez, darn these Excel programs anyway...

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  4. Well no matter, the sheriff "took full responsibility."
    I guess that means he will step down out of personal embarrassment and the county commission will pick another right? Wha, oh, you mean he isn't stepping down? Then what does "taking responsibility" mean?

    Speaking of the sheriff, last week he went before the board of commissioners seeking to purchase a $65,000 three/quarter ton pick-up truck. Sheriff said he needed something to haul his trailers and to move the sheriff patrol boats around on trailers etc. With only one question from Comm. Ozias it became apparent the sheriff needed a new truck to issue to an OPNET detective who will take it home, use is as his own, while the county will pay all the gas, tires, oil, insurance, etc and this truck will never tug a sheriff's trailer. It was bullshit from the start but they still voted for it. "How long, Oh Lord, how long"

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  5. I can see why the Lange Settlement Agreement costing the county taxpayers half a million dollars is of such small consequence to these people. The simple in-office spreadsheet errors cost us a half million. By comparison, we are getting off pretty good as long as the goofusses let us off with errors under a half million.

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  6. Does this kind of thing happen in other towns? Like, Clallam County has 70,000 people in it. King County has almost 2 million.

    If the Clallam Sheriffs Dept can make mistakes to the tune of $500,000, does King county Sheriffs Dept mike mistakes proportionately?

    If King County Sheriff's Dept made similar mistakes, it would amount to around $15 million.

    Think anybody would be upset? What would happen?

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  7. So the county finance dep't is just cutting payroll checks without EVER cross-referencing that to the approved budget? Let's consider the full ramifications of this "mistake".

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  8. Great headline, CK! LOL!

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  9. Interesting timing of this admission by the County, given the whole Selinda thing.

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    1. Lord knows how much of their neanderthalic garbage they'll try to blame her for.

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  10. Creasey's first question is likewise stupid and idiotic.
    Therefore his second can be answered simply by firing him.

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  11. Is this a "County" issue, or a Sheriff Dept issue? Who made the mistakes?

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  12. Speaking of idiocy, I see Chelsea Ward is back in the news, threatening the Port O Call.

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    1. I'm guessing Chelsea got worried that she was being largely forgotten by the community. Nobody cares about her but she doesn't know it yet.

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  13. So, it turns out the Nippon mill has been DEAD for a MONTH, and the PDN is just now getting around to telling us. They stopped making paper, laid off all their workers, etc. It's DONE. Like this town. DONE. Over. Finished.

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  14. Nippon has, at long last, shut down. This shouldn't surprise anyone with a functioning brain. (Sorry, Cherie!) Those of us who can think and see have seen this coming for a long, long time.

    Of course our local elected officials will be "shocked" by this, but they too shouldn't be. I have to wonder if someone like Cherie Kidd even heard it when, say, Max Mania said the mill will close, the city will lose revenue, and they need to plan accordingly. This will be a HUGE blow to the city budget, one they have not (despite the warnings) planned for at all.

    Nippon will almost certainly go the Rayonier route and leave us with nothing but unpaid bills and toxic waste. They have raped, reaped and are ready to run. Still have nothing but kind words for that "local company" Cherie?

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