Au revoir, and reprieve

     Say good-bye to Cindy Parr, whose title changed once or twice since December, and now Larry Twele, director of economic development. Both are leaving for better jobs, which increasingly is being defined as any job not with the current leadership in Carroll County.
     Parr will take over at Human Services Programs of Carroll County, which gets about 20 percent of its funding from the county -- for now -- and is actually an independent state-dictated agency to serve some of the needs of the area's less affluent citizens.
    She, like half a dozen other key people under the previous commissioners, took a cut in pay when the current board swashbuckled into office. She changed offices at least once, but her job was to give Steve Powell, chief of staff, some help on the growing number of pots that needed watching while the new board "consolidated" -- they would say eliminated -- jobs. The jobs still needed to be done, and there has been an exodus of good leaders in county government, beginning when they saw the makeup of the new board.
     Twele also took a pay cut, but will land on his feet with a job as executive director of economic development in Howard County, where he lives with his family. Highly respected around the state, Twele came to the county from a post with the state department of economic development, and was instrumental in getting professional assessments of how and what the county needed and could achieve in attracting new business.
     That preparation was a key part of the master plan that was opposed most vehemently by Richard Rothschild in his campaign for commissioner.
     Twele and others wanted to create new zoning for white collar jobs, but critics misrepresented the efforts as putting factories in farmland.
     In other news, published reports have it that Junction, Inc., recently at the brink of oblivion, has been given another chance at surviving. For more than 30 years, Junction, operating out of modest offices in the historic old stone jailhouse on Court Street, has served the public with drug counseling and intervention programs.
     Never the recipient of much public money, Junction started as an alternative program depending on peer counseling, self-direction and positive reinforcement, then evolved through the years to more conventional methods of dealing with the causes of addiction, focused on the causes of behaviors rather than mere corrections.
     Once-reluctant law enforcement agencies became partners, and mainstream society provided financial and leadership support to a program that showed that it worked.
     Like most other social programs, Junction faced abandonment in these tighter financial times, but even uber-conservative commissioner Robin Frazier has joined the chorus to keep Junction going, most likely because someone pointed out that the county puts little money up in the first place, and there is little downside, therefore, to giving support.
     As these conservative commissioners see how much of a bang for the buck they get to deal with real human issues, look for them to continue to re-examine some of their election campaign rhetoric.
     They're already seeing the value of Access Carroll, but won't change their mind on the Wheeler building because they don't want to lose face; they still have to show a willingness to reverse some of the actions of the previous "liberal" board. But value is value, so we can hope they will find a way to spin their actions -- even if it's merely taking credit for things they once derided.
     Case in point: The business complex on Liberty Road that several of them opposed when they were running for office. It's an old truism in politics that the first people to show up for a ground-breaking photo opportunity are those who opposed it until it was a done deal.
     The airport project will be another case in point, and this board has already had a taste of the irrational rhetoric in opposition. Go in grace.