COMMISSIONERS COURT SPEECH

OCTOBER 24, 2005

For a year I have been coming to this court and pleading with you to step back and reassess the financial stability of this county.  you have poured money into FORD PARK THE ENTERTAINMENT COMPLEX and left our bank accounts vulnerable.  Time and again I cautioned that if a disaster hit we would be in financial trouble. 

I was met with stoic resistance.

During the evacuation this county was once again flooded with cars and people on the highways for 20 hours at a time.  Evacuating at the same time with Houston and galveston proved to be a wrong move. 

Hurricane Rita tore through this county leaving us devastated and dependant on the government entity FEMA.  Some lessons were learned from Hurricane Katrina but evidently not enough. 

Emergency management operations failed to take vital actions within the first few hours and days after rita struck.  My question is :   why wasn’t the court house and jail secured immediately.  If emergency management operations is so smart and prepared why was the sheriffs department left out?  Don’t tell me this is an oversight.  I'm not going to believe you.   

This court house has extremely sensitive documents here, people’s lives are recorded here.  The jail houses inmates.  Mr Griffith you left your county duties of which you took an oath to defend and elevated city governments, police and fire departments above county law enforcement. 

It is shameful to this county that you spent $451,000 on generators for the city of Beaumont and didn’t lift a finger to secure county government. This was dangerous and reckless.   Our sheriff had to use donated equipment to continue to function.  The city of Beaumont should reimburse this county for the $451,000.

What you did secure was the elegante hotel.  Using city employees to work a county department extravagantly spending money you   HOPE fema will reimburse.  The problem with the mantra “FEMA will pay”  is that there is no guarantee of this, and reimbursement is future uncertainty not immediate.

If this court decides to pay for trailers and hook up fees, that will become a disaster in it self.  If you are told the state will pay for it.  get it in writing first.  This idea will end up being a disaster just like canceling hockey,  snubbing the sheriffs department, renting the elegante, instituting marshal law, keeping people out of their homes and business, trying to hire a company that has not placed a bid, and the contractor for the visitors center.

Please be careful  with fema money,  reimbursement means sometime in the future  the county gets money back.