Glennie’s math doesn’t add up

Page Glennie, in his rambling letter to the editor last week wrote, “My motivation is to insure our precious tax dollars are spent wisely in order to preserve our rare and beautiful Rappahannock County.”

I have lived here for about 45 years. I am thankful that through the years some very smart and insightful folks worked to preserve the uniqueness and beauty of Rappahannock County. I’m also thankful our current Board of Supervisors is doing an excellent job continuing that special endeavor.

Mr. Glennie alleges the Board of Supervisors’ management and business skills aren’t up to snuff. To illustrate, Mr. Glennie uses examples of King & Queen County, Madison County and Richmond County, jurisdictions he believes are run more efficiently.

I went online and studied the budgets of these counties. He is flat out wrong about the administrative costs in all three counties — wildly off the mark in some cases.

As an example, Mr. Glennie compared the salaries of the County Administrator, County Attorney and Zoning Administrator of King & Queen County with Rappahannock County. Rappahannock’s are lower. So to try to prove his point about salaries being out of control, Mr. Glennie gratuitously tossed in the $60,000 salary of Rappahannock’s Human Resources Director and said see, you’re doing a poor job.

Actually it is Mr. Glennie who is doing a poor job.

When the total salaries for County Administration and Zoning are compared on an apples-to-apples basis, King and Queen County is paying $365,000 for what Rappahannock accomplishes for $295,000. To make matters worse, King & Queen County is paying an additional $74,380 for an Economic Development Director, a GIS Coordinator and a Erosion and Sedimentation Officer.

So I’d say Rappahannock’s Board of Supervisors is doing a pretty good job of managing salaries and Mr. Glennie is the one with suspect business skills.