Over the past 15 to 20 years, the buildings owned by the county have been deteriorating at an alarming rate. Much faster than property owned by companies or individuals in the private sector. This is most evident in the case of the Pulaski County detention building, which just recently was reported by engineers to require 5.7 million dollars in repairs due to a simple roof leak that started years ago. When the question of why this has happened is asked, the standard answer is always the lack of money to make the repairs. But, the longer you let repairs go unattended the more damage it creates and the more the repair costs grow.

Good news, however, may be on the horizon for all of the buildings in Pulaski County. An energy specialty firm called Siemens Inc. has completed a two month study on the county's buildings and has a proposal that will repair and maintain all of the county's buildings and solve 85% of the maintenance problems. All without increasing our out-going costs and increasing the annual budget. How is that possible you might say? Well, by good common sense management of our current resources and by decreasing the current utility costs and using the savings to pay for the improvements. Not only will it put more funds BACK into the general fund, but the company, by way of their contract with the county, will guarantee the savings and provide annual maintenance of the program and the new equipment over the next 16 years. The process itself will not take years as it would normally if we were trying to handle it one problem at a time, instead it will only take 8 months to complete.

This is a huge leap forward and if approved by the Quorum Court on Tuesday night, will free up more funds to make drastically needed repairs on the structures themselves and all of our county buildings will be in whole condition once more.

Once again, serious problems can be solved without increasing the taxes to the residents of Pulaski County. Necessity really IS the mother of invention.

Allen Kerr