EDITORIAL: Putnam County Parks Board needs to quit dreaming

July 24--The Putnam County Commission met with Scott Williamson, parks director, to go over the finances of the county's Parks and Recreation Commission.

The meeting was illuminating. The parks board bought a building and renamed it The Commons. The plan was to pay off the mortgage by renting the building to businesses.

Last year, the mortgage payments were $36,000 -- and its collections from businesses were zero.

Williamson blamed the county commission for not giving the parks board enough taxpayer money to renovate the building.

But no matter what color you paint a white elephant, it remains a white elephant.

And white elephants and Putnam County agencies seem to go hand in hand. Administrators like to dream big, but they think small.

Consider the sudden collapse of the Putnam County Health Department 13 months ago. The agency had to pay $100,000 in legal fees in a losing battle against an employee grievance.

But even if the health department had prevailed, it was in trouble, because it overbuilt its new facility in 2010. Just as the parks people thought rents would pay the mortgage on The Commons, the health department thought a public clinic would pay its mortgage.

That didn't happen.

These over-extensions of these agencies are built on a fantasy that if you build it, they will come. That only works in the movies.

In real life, building a customer base takes time and skill. Just because Putnam County is growing, that does not mean everything planted in Putnam County grows.

There's a reason Wal-Mart has not built a second store in the county.

The good news is that after the health department's collapse, the Putnam County Commission decided to meet every six months or so with agency directors, such as Williamson. The even better news is that they may have discovered a problem that can be fixed before the parks department has to shut down.

But the bad news is members of the parks board have not learned from the 1980s when county taxpayers had to bail the board out after the parks department could not pay its electric bills or meet its liability insurance premiums.

The parks board operates five parks. That's enough. If people want a place to meet, let some taxpaying company build it and see who comes.

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