PHOTO: Jo, a 62-year-old school teacher with a so-called ‘psychological disorder’ known as hoarding.
How do we share power, in 2023, in Archuleta County?
Around the globe, power is shared, or transferred, or hoarded, in various ways. Peacefully, or not. The word “hoarded” seems to capture the right meaning, for how some people treat power. In a democratic republic, we generally assign political power to elected and appointed representatives, and those representatives have the option to hoard the power, or share it.
Hoarding is a fascinating aspect of human character, not exclusive to any particular sex; hoarders can be men, or women. Or people in a gender transition. I suppose nearly all of us have a measure of ‘hoarder’ within us, although we probably hide the tendency in a storage unit, garage, or attic.
Some of us, however, fill our bedroom, dining room, living room, entry hall…
This past week, I saw the Archuleta Board of County Commissioners — when faced with a surprise ‘resolution’ and an opportunity to hoard their power — set the resolution aside, at least temporarily, and agree to a meeting with the advisory committee they themselves had appointed. That advisory committee — the County Public Health Department Transitional Advisory Committee — has been meeting weekly, and in between those meetings, doing research into the best possible design for a public health department.
Archuleta County was essentially evicted from the existing San Juan Basin Public Health (SJBPH) district, by the La Plata Board of County Commissioners. The Archuleta BOCC had committed the transgression of questioning certain SJBPH policies, and the three La Plata commissioners could not abide that behavior. Thus, the dissolution of SJBPH, after 70 years of cooperation between the two counties.
Last Monday, we heard two reports by the Advisory Committee. Kathy Campbell and Dr. Rhonda Webb reported on various public health programs and the cost of those programs.
Andrea Phillips and Susanne Bryant gave a lengthy and rather detailed summary of how other similar-sized Colorado counties operate their health departments. Listening to that summary, I was left with the impression that SJBPH had evolved into, per capita, one of the more expensive public health districts in the state, and that the future Archuleta County public health department may turn out, in the end, to be a more affordable option.
More affordable for the County government, and more affordable for the citizens.
Which is not to say, ‘inexpensive’.
Nothing in Archuleta County is ‘inexpensive’ these days, seems like. Maybe socks, at Walmart?
The state of Colorado has some specific rules about public health departments. For example, Archuleta County must have one… and it must be governed by a ‘Board of Health’. The Board of Health can consist of the three county commissioners plus a medical expert. Alternatively, the Board of Health can consist mainly of community members.
The Public Health Department Transitional Advisory Committee presented its ideas about the Board of Health composition last month.
The County staff wrote up a resolution for last Tuesday’s agenda, that differed from the Advisory Committee’s recommendation.
Then, the BOCC unanimously voted to table their resolution, and announced plans to meet with the Advisory Committee on Tuesday to discuss possible differences of opinion concerning the public health department.
I recall attending some of the interviews when the BOCC was selecting the members of the Advisory Committee. One of the questions posed to the candidates was, “What role should political ideology play in the formation of a health department?” The candidates I heard replied, essentially, “None.”
I frankly don’t understand how anyone who is designing a political, tax-funded government agency can expect that ‘political ideology’ can somehow be avoided.
I understand that Politics can be ugly. Some of the people who become deeply involved in Politics are dishonest, narcissistic, malignant assholes. The power inherent in political leadership is attractive to a certain type of personality, and the resulting laws and policies sometimes reflect the ugly side of human ambition.
When the American colonists were searching for a political system that could safely replace the authority of kings and queens with a different distribution of power, they understood very well the ugly side of politics, and their solution was interesting. They decided to divide the authority between various branches of government, and between the States and the Federal Government, and between local, regional and national governments. They also decided to hand the job of picking leaders to a generally-poorly-informed citizenry, through a voting process.
These decisions produced governments that were less ‘efficient’ and more disorderly. We are the beneficiaries of those decisions, and our political governments are sometimes messy, and often disappointing.
Politics can feel, in fact, like a hoarder’s living room.
Unpleasant… even offensive. Repellent.
That’s our curse, but also our blessing. Inefficiency is the only thing saving us from a terrible fate.
As I’ve mentioned previously, the County Public Health Department Transitional Advisory Committee ended up composed of six women and one man. We’re not sure, at this point, whether the Archuleta commissioners are going to listen to the ideas that come from a group of mostly women volunteers, who are spending many hours researching the issues involved in standing up a new public health department.
We can’t assume that the manner in which the Advisory Committee is performing their research is devoid of ‘political ideology’. I don’t think an intelligent, rational person can separate himself or herself or themselves from their political outlook…
…and from what I can tell, the Advisory Committee consists of seven intelligent, rational citizens.
When I was looking for information about the soon-to-be-dissolved San Juan Basin Public Health district, I found, on their website, the ‘annual reports’ from the past several years. Here’s a photo from one of those reports, presumably showing some of the staff.
We might notice the number of women in these photos. I count 17 women and two men.
How do we understand that fact? That women are innately more interested, than men, in health? Innately more interested, on both the delivery end, and the receiving end?
How do we want to approach the distribution of power, in such a situation?
Bill Hudson began sharing his opinions in the Pagosa Daily Post in 2004 and can’t seem to break the habit. He claims that, in Pagosa Springs, opinions are like pickup trucks: everybody has one.