Did Ken Kraft Actually Act Like a Statesman?

On Friday, I told you NorCo Council voted 6-3 to table an ordinance authorizing $63 million in new debt for a new parking garage and office building at the courthouse campus. Voting to table were Council members Lori Vargo Heffner, Ron Heckman, Jeff Corpora, Tom Giovanni, John Goffredo and Ken Kraft. Voting against tabling were John Brown, Kelly Keegan and Jeff Warren.

I want to present remarks made by Council members. That job was more difficult because I was unable to hear them at times, despite watching the video twice.

Earlier this year, Ken Kraft was in the County Council doghouse and for good reason. Council had asked the court to fill a Council vacancy and Kraft took it upon himself to appear in front of our President Judge and misrepresent what had happened. I personally do not think he intended to mislead the court, and in any event, he failed. 

But Thursday night, Kent Kraft the partisan rubber stamp was more of a statesman than at any time I ever saw him in his long career on Council. He gave a lengthy speech to explain why he thinks a new parking deck and county building are necessary, imbued with all kinds of anecdotes from our history and our unfortunate tendency to kick things down the road. He made no personal attacks and spoke in an open and friendly way that put others at ease. His speech was so impressive that Council members Ron Heckman, Lori Vargo Heffner, John Brown and even John Goffredo acknowledged his points

Two weeks ago, Council member John Goffredo was on fire, effectively making points on nearly every issue that came up. But Thursday, he was completely ineffective and unpersuasive. He attempted to turn a county request to fund a county project into an attack on federal debt, and also complained about voter ID and Mail-in Ballots, even though these are both beyond county jurisdiction. Even worse, he seemed to think we'd believe his walk-around of a problem parking deck was somehow superior to the findings of a licensed civil engineer and several Professional Engineers who preceded him. 

Here's my summary.  

Jeff Warren. (He often makes his points from scripts prepared in advance). He argued that some employees in human services are "working out of closets" and that the elections office should be able to work from a central location instead of the current hodge podge arrangement. The garage is a public safety hazard. "The last thing we all need is a huge chunk of rock coming down [and] hitting somebody." Given that the county credit rating is A1, now is the fiscally responsible time to make this move. 

John Goffredo. "I don't know how we can say this is fiscally responsible with the information that we have." He's seen no budget for the $63 million borrowing plan, There are no architectural drawings, just conceptual. (There is a cost estimate, which was presented to Council's finance committee, without which no bond could be floated). "Cutting a check for $63 million is a little premature." He suggested the county should first study how to use the space it does have more efficiently and then determine more realistically what is needed. "This is a Cadillac and I think we need to be able to be looking at the financial interests of the taxpayer as well, not just the people who work in this building." He then leapfrogged to claim we are borrowing from a government (we're not) that is trillions of dollars in debt and not fiscally responsible. He denied that the parking garage is unsafe. "Our parking deck is absolutely fine. I literally walked all around it before I came here, looked all over, and I do have expertise in that, and I do not think it's structurally deficient. ... It is not falling down. That is a structurally sound parking deck and it'll be structurally sound for at least 10, 20 more years if you keep maintaining the way it has been maintained ... . I will provide a structural engineer to come give a second opinion if they're saying it's dilapidated or falling down because it's just not the case, especially after the repairs." 

Kelly Keegan: "We need this election integrity committee because we're all worried about elections, on this hand. But then when you hear we're disjointed and it could be safer on this hand, you don't want to give them the money." (Translation, the elections office needs one location to conduct more secure elections and other offices need more space as well). "Either you want to set them [elections office] up for failure or you just want to obstruct this.... Let's stop being pennywise and dollar foolish. Let's be fiscally responsible. We have the money. Let's do what's right. ... You [addressing Goffredo] walk around the parking lot and make these assumptions that it's sound for 10-20 years .... -

Goffredo: "That's what I do for a living." (Then he digressed to condemn voter ID and Mail-in Ballots as the real election integrity problems. Both of those are outside the county realm, something he should know by now), 

Keegan then went on to challenge Goffredo's expertise despite being admonished to make her points to the chair. The two began to bicker until Vargo-Heffner shut both down.

Ken Kraft: "This is like deja vu for me all over again. I've been at that parking deck since God knows when. It is falling down. It's been repaired by every Executive - I think even John [Brown] had part of trying to fix it. It's a mess. ... I've been around a long time. We've had Councils that would do things and we have Councils that put it in park and don't do anything and talk all the time. Mr. Heckman remembers when we used to have the Milides Building, the Wolf building, we had everybody all over the place. We built a human services building. I heard the same exact arguments. 'Oh my God, we're spending this much money on a human services building. How dare we? How can we do that? We're going to waste all this money. Oh my God, blah, blah, blah.' So we did it. All my life I wanted to build a new morgue (we don't call it a morgue ... I still call it a morgue). We finally got that done. .... They don't spend the entire bond. .... I've also been in construction for years. I don't know if you [Goffredo] actually went to college for that kind of stuff. That garage has wrecked a lot of my cars over the years. Mr. Heckman might be able to speak as to how long that garage has been a mess. We've been through many executives, many fixes. 

"We are out of space. It was supposed to be for human services only and the veterans administration. ... Now we have other people from the county in there. It's crowded. ... [We] need to build this stinkin' building and get rid of that garage. ... We need to be a Council that does something for once and not just talk about it and say No to everything. [The morgue] was working out of a farmhouse and [the Coroner] was dialing for refrigerators to put our bodies because we had no place to put our bodies when people died and we did that for 30 years. It just kept going and going and no one would get the money together to build a morgue. But we did on [a previous] Council. I think Mr Heckman voted for it, Lori [Vargo-Heffner] voted for it. We saw things that needed to be done. This projecting down the road .... we keep band-aiding stuff, we keep trying to find other space. ... We were going to keep the Milides building. Finally, it got condemned by the City of Easton. That's how we work here. ... We're going to get the actual bids. This is the bonding.  

Lori Vargo Heffner: "That was 10 minutes, and I think you took a breath at 8, so that diving [Kraft is a scuba diver] is really .... I need to sigh on. If that's a violation of whatever act we have, I don't care. That was pretty impressive." 

John Brown: "I think $63 million s a lot of money. I don't think I have enough information to really vet this project and all its moving parts. The parking garage has been an issue for a long, long time." He agreed that the parking deck could be rehabbed in a "significant way if not replaced completely." But he believes the market for commercial office space is "cratering," so he rejects McClure's claim that it would cost $2.7 million to lease office space. He indicated the county should explore remote work opportunities and accused the McClure administration of "hoarding cash" that could easily be used for a new parking deck. He suggested retrofitting part of Gracedale for the additional office space needed.

Brown did agree with Kraft's assertion that Council does have a tendency to kick things down the road. 

After this several Council members spoke but either failed to use their mikes or there was a system failure. . 

Tom Giovanni: He said we are now in the era of remote work. "We're looking at making a building just like Guardian did. They made this new building, and half the people work remotely ... and the building's half empty." He needs more information before he can support a $63 million bond. 

Ron Heckman: Made the point that the legislative branch is a separate branch of government, a point he has made numerous times in the past. He cautioned against knocking down and shaming Council members, saying it us unhelpful. "I think we could get a little more specificity for these people who have concerns." "We need to work with each other a little more as opposed to yelling at each other. ... I support this but don't think it's unfair to give more information to people who ask for it." 

After everyone had spoken once, several Council members decided to speak again, doing little more than repeating what they previously said. 

Lori Vargo Heffner: "I'm not opposed but I'm not in favor." 

The can got kicked down the road. But council does seem open.