Lighting Tax Dollars on Fire

Happy Friday!

Election week has come and gone and we have two new commissioners, a new school board member and a new judge. Social media has made this cycle interesting to say the least. We will talk more about that later.

Today, we are back to county government.

Tuesday is the next BOCC meeting. The agenda drops the week before the meeting. I mentioned it on the Facebook page earlier in the week...

Side note.. If you do not follow that page, I suggest you do. I post individual things on there throughout the week that wont necessarily make a full article. So keep an eye on that.

Back on topic, in the agenda for next week I noticed that Right Rudder has a settlement agreement proposed and signed. This is coming from our attorneys, so I imagine that it was part of the shade meetings that the commissioner have had over the last few weeks. Remember, a couple months ago they mentioned they wanted to drop the Right Rudder lawsuit. We were spending too much tax dollars on litigation.

Well... looks like we are there.

There is no easy way to link to the specific agreement, but here is the entire agenda. The Settlement agreement is on page 920.

The came to 2 agreements.

#1 - The county will waive the requirement for Right Rudder to have a part 141 certification

#2 - Right Rudder will send its sub-leases to the county for approval. The county has 15 days to state its approval or objection to the leases. If nothing is stated within 15 days, they are automatically approved. This only covers the hangars that Right Rudder operates on the airport facility. The county manages a set of hangars themselves as well.

This also ensures that Right Rudder can keep operating the airport as allowed in their FBO lease with the county. The lease remains in effect through the end of its term, which is the middle of 2028.

That's it. Of course, no on admits they were wrong. Each side pays their own attorney's fees. Both sides drop their lawsuits.... and we all live happily ever after... or something like that.

But what was the point in all of this to begin with?

You see, the county waged war on Right Rudder. They sent the notice of termination to them. They sent the eviction notices. They wanted Right Rudder gone... and as a result, Right Rudder fought back.

The actions of the county have literally lit $100,000 on fire and burned it. What did we get for that money? Absolutely nothing.

The county was so adamant that Right Rudder obtain and maintain a Part 141 certification that they were willing to kick them to the curb. They initiated the lawsuit to be able to force them out over it... and not they are like "nah.. we changed our minds. You do not need it anymore".

$100,000 spent on all of this between the litigation and the attorney's fees of our aviation attorney, Chris Wilson, who worked on staff's direction on the termination.

But remember... despite staff doing the termination without BOCC approval... the BOCC ultimately approved it months later.

This raises a question. One that I raised before in past articles. Read these if you want to get caught up.

How can staff work with an attorney to terminate a contract and ask a company to leave WITHOUT going to the BOCC to do that. The BOCC has to sign these contracts. The staff member that worked with Mr Wilson was NOT Steve Howard. It was NOT a department director. It was a mid-level staffer that was giving direction to the contracted attorney as if the attorney was his personal attorney.

The county legal team was not included in any of these conversations. NONE. Why not?

The BOCC was not included in any of this... Why not?

I saw a few emails to Steve Howard, but he largely was not included in any of this... Why not?

The department head, Carlton Hall, was included in some emails, but was NOT the one giving direction... Why not?

This entire thing was started because a commissioner (Bays) was trying to help a friend secure space at the airport and neither of them liked Right Rudder. The text messages and emails prove it. No other commissioner was involved in any of this. Only her... and she questioned a lot of things at that airport in coordination with her friend.

Pretty crazy.

But we may as well put $100,000 in a pile and lit it on fire because we literally just wasted that money... unless the goal was to change ownership of Right Rudder... but then why is government intervening in private business like that? Other than that, the county got absolutely nothing from this other than a process to review leases... which could have been a 10 minute phone call.

But good news for Right Rudder. They can continue to operate the airport as they have been. By all reports I have heard, they have been doing a good job, so hopefully the county leaves them alone now and lets them do their thing.

Ultimately, this comes down on Steve Howard. It was his staff that led this crusade. He could have stopped it at any moment... or more importantly... brought it to the attention of the entire board before a mess was made. The board could have then discussed it publicly and maybe we avoided all of this.

Annual review anyone? Oh wait... we do not do those for him. Shucks.

One thing that will be fun after all this is done... reading the shade meeting transcription. You see, each shade meeting has a court reporter present. That court reporter is transcribing that meeting... word for word.

These become public once a case has ended.

It will be interesting to see what the commissioners have said behind closed doors throughout this process. I bet NONE of them knew these meetings were being transcribed much less available to the public later on. This could be interesting. Stay tuned!