By Charlene Sims, info@linncountyjournal.com
MOUND CITY – “I don’t know why you didn’t put your name on the ballot. You got it all figured out.”
That was the response Linn County Commission Chair Danny McCullough had for for rural Parker resident Tom Kemper during the weekly commission meeting on Monday, Aug. 15.
“If you want to solve the mowing problem, why don’t you take Monday morning off and go mow, because we can still do the job with two,” Kemper replied to McCullough’s jab during the public comment portion of the meeting
Immediately prior to McCullough’s comment Kemper had expressed concern that the commission was looking at counties like Douglas and Crawford for answers when Douglas had a population of 120,000 and Crawford with 40,000 and both with big colleges. Kemper said that their budgets are totally different than Linn County’s budget.
He suggested that the commissioners look at Miami County for some answers and copy some of their solutions to urban sprawl. He said that Miami County had already had the problem that Johnson County had so why wouldn’t Linn County copy them until they came up with something better.
Early in Kemper’s comments, he told commissioners, that he had been coming there for the last seven or eight meetings and “I’m getting disappointed in what you guys are trying to do.”
He started with the mowing issue raised by a county shop foreman last week. Those guys were saying they don’t have anybody to put on the tractor, Kemper said.
“What does that tell you?” said Kemper. “You need to pay a little bit more? You heard these guys saying that they’ve got nobody applying?”.
He continued saying that the county has tractors and mowers broken down.
“Are our tractors and mowers old?” asked Kemper. “Have we thought about buying or upgrading the equipment?”
Kemper then said that he heard the commissioners saying to the road foremen to do whatever it takes to make it better but then saying they want to keep the revenue neutral rate on taxes for 2025.
“You don’t want to raise any taxes. You want them to get the same amount of work done,” said Kemper. “I’m hearing complaints from you about road ditching.”
He then said he read that the county had $4 million worth of road damage and then they expected the road department with the people that they have with no additional equipment and no additional hours to get this done.
Kemper said that the commissioners were not listening. He blamed part of this on the fact that the speakers (foremen) were not directed to come to the podium and that was the commissioners’ job to make sure they were heard.
“David (Lamb) finally brought a microphone so everybody in the county could hear it,” said Kemper. “You guys might want to think about listening to them. You are spending all kinds of time telling them what they are not doing.”
He said that his mom and dad told him that when he had problem and did not have a solution to his complaint that he was part of the problem.
“Why don’t you guys figure it out? What do you need to do to help these people?” asked Kemper.
“You’ve lost two or three lawyers, you lost another good employee (Jessica Hightower) today,” he said. “That’s not going to have the answers for when you have a silly question next week about some number.
“She’s not going to be working here. How many more employees are going to leave before you guys finally figure out to come up with a different method? Quit complaining, come up with solutions that work or get off.”
“Listen to most of the these guys and gals,” he continued. “They want to do their jobs. I realize not all of them are great. That’s the way it is in every business. However, most of them are going to try and do a good job. Most of them are going to try and figure out how to do something with nothing.”
“I think you guys need to look in the mirror at home and figure out what you can do to help instead of hinder. That’s all for now!”
Following Kemper’s criticism, rural Mound City resident Mike White suggested to the commission that it contract out work on the ditches to allow road crews to focus on roads.
Lamb told the commission that an area businessman approached him offering to work on the county’s ditches.
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