Tonight the Vance County Board of Commissioners will hold a meeting, with a lengthy over 200 page agenda packet. You may download the packet on here.
Weekly Address: It’s Time for Congress to Act to Help Responsible Homeowners. President Obama continues his call for a return to American values, including fairness and equality, as part of his blueprint for an economy built to last.
West Wing Week: Riding the Advanced Technology Superhighway This week, the President made history by holding the first completely virtual interview at the White House on Google+. He also tackled the rising cost of tuition at the University of Michigan, welcomed the President of Georgia, convened a cabinet meeting, stopped by the Washington Auto Show, announced a major refinancing plan for responsible homeowners, and attended the National Prayer Breakfast.
The February 2012 Henderson-Vance County EDC Board meeting is Wednesday, February 8th at 9:15 a.m. at the Bank of America Conference Room.
We’re excited to have a new columnist starting hopefully this week, please keep an eye out on Wednesday for a new column entitled “Spiritual Reflections of a Political and Economic Nature”. Will post more details when I can confirm.
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Welcome to the Open Lines!
Over the weekend a friend of mine and I were listing to the hacked the phone conversation between Scotland Yard and the FBI. (You can listen yourself it is on YouTube.) We got to talking about that hack when we saw the news story about the hack into the Salt Lake City police database. I said that is just strange. My friend said it is because often times the authorities in charge are sloppy, arrogant, and ignorant. I said that is harsh. My friend then said look at Vance County. There are at least two outward facing servers that are unsecured. I said are you kidding me. My friend says grab your lap and I’ll show you. So we drove down to the parking lot outside the old court house opened the lap tops and searched for a wireless connection. Sure enough there were two of them; just ripe for the plucking. I asked my friend if he knew what data was on the servers or accessible through the servers. To which my friend said he wasn’t certain. He just want to prove his point that for cyber hackers to succeed they need only to look around for managements’ sloppy practices, arrogant attitudes, and incompetence by ignorance. We drove off without knowing what information a hacker could learn after accessing the Vance County data net work through these unsecured servers.
A couple weeks ago the paper reported that some members of the city council were bemoaning the absence of citizen input. I have been attending the County Commissioners’ Board meetings and have observed a lack of citizen input except for a few major topics. I do not have an explanation for the public’s silence.
Instead I would like to focus our collective attention on the cost of printing the 220 page commissioner’s packet for tonight’s meeting. To print enough copies of the packet for the seven commissioners, county attorney, county manager, county finance manager, HiH, and the Dispatch the county printed 2,200 pages of paper. A full case of paper is 5,000 sheets and costs about $39.00 at Staples. Add to this the cost the four binder clips per packet. The county used four boxes of binder clips from a $15.00 box of binder clips. Then there are the mailing envelopes and labels used to package and address the packets. Based on current cost for these supplies at Staples, today’s packet cost the county taxpayers nearly $40 and this does not include the cost of the toner cartridge. The cost of the supplies also excludes labor costs to copy, collate, and package the packets. Did any of you notices the blank page about three quarters of the way though the 220 pages?
This packet of 220 pages is necessary for the Commissioners to do their job of governing the county. Of these 220 pages only two appear to require a signature by any official. Instead of adding to the counties ever increasing expenses and expanding need for land fill, collectively commit to stopping this wasteful printing. Post the packet to the County’s web-site and save hundreds of dollars a year in supplies and Ms. Grissom’s labors to copy, collate, and package the packets.
Do we think posting the packet to the County’s web-site encourage citizen input? It will reduce operating expenses.
Ask the County Manager what is on the severs ,I am sure that our host could find out
Anonymous. Just because they had unsecured wireless networks doesn’t mean any servers are on it. They could very well be for the purpose of public access. I have that in my own office, and have set it up for numerous customers. One wireless for public access, and then a private one for server and network communication. I’m not saying this is the case for what you saw, but it’s a possibility. I know another reader has also mentioned to me they were able to connect to a wireless network while in the old courthouse as well.
Elmwood, The host being me I assume? As in the host of this website? I can tell you that as far as I know there is no way the full agenda packet can be on the county website, because they can’t even send it to the media in a pdf. Either I, or a loyal reader, goes to the county administration office when our packet is ready and picks up the full printed out, in this case 220 pages, and brings it to our office. Someone at the county staples it, or clips, or binds it into various sections, and I have to unbind, or unstaple it, and feed it through our scanner. It’s a huge time involved process that really isn’t necessary. I have asked the County Clerk to please provide to us a PDF instead. It would save paper, toner, wear and tear on the printer, labor to assemble and bind the thing. All so we can just disassemble it, scan it in and throw the whole stack away. I mean, the last one took up my entire morning to translate it from a stack of 220 pages to a pdf for you guys to download.
If it was PDF a whole lot of peoples time and resources could be saved. Not to mention, the commissioners could receive it sooner. I know that we received our copy before Mr. Garrisson ever saw it just because a reader went to the admin building and picked up our copy that morning so we could get working on scanning itin. If it was PDF, it could be posted on the county website for all to download, or at least emailed out to the commissioners and media. I’m sure the commissioners need some time to read and fully understand such a huge packet in just a few days before the meeting.
However, I have been told by the clerk they do not have a way to convert the packet to a PDF, with both an issue in technology and knowledge. I have offered to provide the technology and knowledge, but they weren’t interested.
I actually feel really bad getting these huge packets and tearing them up. I know someone took a lot of time to put them together, and sign the copies. But it’s the way they like to do things so we’ll go with it. The Board of Education is the same way with printing out their packets, and the process we have to go through to scan them in. However, the City of Henderson is on the ball, and Esther does a great job of getting us the full packet in PDF form by email before the meetings.
If ‘our host’ means the county website, I do not host the current website, and will not be hosting the new county website. Which I am quite upset about, we were never contacted about even submitting a bid for the website. I have asked many times to be put on the proposal contact list, sent a letter to the county manager, talked with commissioners, and we have yet to ever receive a request for bid from the county, whether its for website or computers and parts. To see the county choose an out of the area firm, with a huge cost way higher, like 6x higher, than we did the city of Henderson’s site for and we never had the chance to even bid.
If you look at the county website, you will see they do eventually put the agenda under the Board of Commissioners section, however it is just the 1 or 2 page summary agenda, not the full packet we publish.
As it stands, HiH is the only place for anyone to download the full agenda packets for the 3 big meetings, the City Council, Board of Commssioners, and Board of Education.
That’s fine with me, I don’t mind doing it at all, I just hope you guys are taking advantage of the time we spend to get that to you and read it before the meetings, and then follow through with that to go to the meeting and add your say.
elmwood, just realized I misread your last statement, what is on the servers of the open network you mean. As I said to Anonymous above, I’m not certain there is a server on the open network, perhaps it is meant to be an open network. If the IT person at the county would want us to try, we could dig around and see what we could find, but us doing so without their permission could actually be considered ‘hacking’ so we won’t be doing that. If one of us accidentally connects to it while we’re eating lunch at Georges nearby or something and anything obvious just pops up then I’ll report back.
Elmwood, the County Manager has no clue what is on the servers or who to ask what is on the servers. The County IT guy can spell IT; making him the brightest light bulb in Vance County’s large dark room of technology ignorance.
Phil thanks for your efforts to get the information and post it.