Marching out of step, too much to the right

     Earlier this month, I wrote that it might be time to take the school impact fees off the table for awhile, but I forgot who was in the County Office Building.
     If there is a way to get things backward, it seems, this board will find it. Too much right angle marching gets them out of sync with reality.
     It turns out they cut the fees retroactively, instead of at some future date. It never occurred to me that they would bend over that far backward to accommodate development interests, but they did. And then they allow the ones who have already paid fees for plans on the board to come in and get refunds. They can still fill up schools with new development when the market warms up again, but they get to keep the money that would have helped build classrooms to house new residents' children.
     Then, they compound the error by entertaining school redistricting AFTER the fact. You should get a handle on how many classrooms you need now and for the next seven years before you eliminate some. Especially if you are eliminating fees that help the government keep up with development.
     It takes more time to build a single school than it does to erect the houses that will fill it.
     A riverboat gambler has a better plan for paying future bills than this board, particularly Robin Frazier and Richard Rothschild.
     State and federal funding will continue to be down. Carroll will probably continue to get short shrift for capital funding, not only for schools, but for roads and water and sewers.
     The self-described conservatives on the board think they're saving money, but all they're doing is putting off the day when all the needs will arrive at once, and there will be nothing in the kitty, and no plan for fixing the problem short of a massive, immediate tax hike.