Retired County Commissioner Howard Collett reflects: Unanticipated agenda highlights tenure

ORIGINALLY WRITTEN JERRY ENGLER
byThe Free Press

Howard Collett looks back over his four years as a Marion County commissioner with a sense of having met some pressing needs coupled with concern “about what we didn’t get done.”

Collett, who has been succeeded by Dan Holub as the District 2 commissioner for the Marion area, feels the county commission during his tenure was at its best dealing with some unanticipated problems.

Chief among these was the financial crisis brought on, in large part, by a decision from the State of Kansas to drop hundreds of thousands in dollars in payments to counties.

Collett said tight budgeting efforts by the commissioners “got us through the financial crunch without raising taxes.” They were aided in their final year by an increase in sales tax revenue, he said.

Asked about the things the commission didn’t get done, Collett said he wanted to think about his response before talking about them because he still intends to work on them, and wants to keep an open dialogue both with people who agree with him and people who didn’t.

Leroy Wetta, who was succeeded in the District 2/Peabody area by Randy Dallke, said he didn’t want to comment at all on his tenure. He said he was leaving matters in the hands of the new commission.

“Let them take their own direction,” he said

Only Bob Hein, District 1 commissioner, remains from the three-member commission that included Collett and Wetta.

Collett said any county commissioner faces a problem he faced.

“There were so many things I wanted to do, so many things that needed to get done,” he said. “But if there were any obstructions to them, they didn’t get done.

“There could be things even a majority of the people might want, but if one group was opposed, that was the end of it. I would hesitate to say much more about that.

“I wanted us to work on a county economic revitalization plan. I would like to see a person in a county office work on economic development for the whole county.

“That person would be our contact person with state offices such as the Kansas Department of Commerce and Tourism, to receive funds, and get help in programs.

“The person would be an enterprise facilitator, someone on hand to do research, help people get started with their businesses, and get going.

“I wish we had gotten a county-wide recycling program going because it would have saved us money, and because it was the right thing to do.

“I think back when the Kansas Department of Health and Environment had grants available that would have made it possible for us to do recycling. KDHE was pushing it pretty strongly.”

Collett said the county transfer station owners at the time, Rex Savage and They Bond, could have have gone forward with recycling.

He said, “Thirty-five percent of the trash we ship to the landfill at Topeka is paper. Every $20 worth of paper recycled we could have diverted from the landfill would have been $20 in savings on freight and shipping.

“With KDHE grants we could have bought paper balers, trailers and bins. We could have started with the bulkiest stuff like the cardboard. We could have had people separate out their newspapers. It would have been a benefit to the whole county.

“Yet, we had elements who didn’t want it, partly because they wanted to protect their own recycling programs.”

Some persons might list purchase and operation of the transfer station to collect solid waste among the major accomplishments of the previous commission.

Collett acknowledged it was an accomplishment of sorts, but mostly it was accomplished because the commission had to do it. He said it did help clean up the county more under county ownership because it brought all of the rural area into the trash-disposal system.

He said the former owners of the transfer station were having a $10,000 shortfall on average every month because they were unable to collect from all of the urban households they were supposed to have under participatory programs. They were billing the county for it, so “we had to do something,” Collett said.

A truly big accomplishment, Collett said, was “that we got the landfill problem solved,” finalizing closure of the old landfill southwest of Marion that was demanded by KDHE through eventual solution of a lawsuit that ended in the Kansas Supreme Court.

“I don’t know that you can give us the credit” for the closure, said Collett. “We had a good insurance company, EMC through agents Richard Nickel and Casey Case, that defended us, and guided us through to a good decision.”

Collett said he hopes the former commission left the county poised in good enough financial shape for the new commission to follow through in the county’s best interests.

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