County leaders have misled communities

Regarding Mary Arlt’s letter to the Editor published on Feb. 9, I applaud you! Not malicious or vindictive, but right on point!

Even after retirement Mary continues to show concern for the public by offering information of services available and the location for the services information, which should be provided by your Adams County Commissioners. Furthermore, what you don’t see from the Commissioners is Government “for the people”, and they have attempted to reduce “by the people” by eliminating the Health District and the input from Adams County, cities and towns.

The staff and the community representatives were “led on” at the least by Commissioners Stevens and Plager.

Quoting Mary Arlt, “In reality, lip service and false promises have preceded the gutting of public health and services to the residents of Ritzville, Lind and Washtucna.”

Adams County Commissioners wanted total control of the money and policies providing health services to Adams County residents. I believe that the commissioners really don’t care about “service” more than once every four years, it is a good thing that there are elected department heads and hourly employees that do!

The commissioners really wanted the control including environmental health and permitting. Years ago, a group of local residents, Del Templin, Glen Stockwell, Dan Hille and others (in the name of economic development) brought Waste Management to Adams County and the permitting process began. Waste Management, County Commissioners, the Adams County Health District and county residents met in what would be a long and sometimes heated ordeal but with Economic Development and “Best Science” in mind the permits were issued. Time passed and the permit and agreement came up for renewal. By this time, Jeff Stevens had been a commissioner for more than two years, but Rudy Plager only a few months. I doubt that he even knew what was in the agreement.

As a Health District board member and Ritzville’s representative, I said that I would support the renewal if “Best Science” was still current and if the previous “free dumping” for Adams County, cities and towns was still included, I was assured by Scott Cave of Waste Management that it would be. Now as all that Health District involvement seems forgotten, the County is dumping at Waste Management in Arlington at no charge – no new economic development or incentives or fee reductions have been offered to Adams County residents, cities or towns, not even free recycling.

In 2008, Commissioner Plager sited the Health Department as one of his accomplishments, now the Ritzville office is open only one day a week and services have been reduced.

One last quote from Mary Arlt’s letter to the Editor, “Commissioner Plager needs to better represent Ritzville, Lind and Washtucna.”

Thank you Mary.

John N. Marshall, Ritzville