Now what is all this chatter from our Sheriff about buying a $750,000 speed boat? It always seems that to make their mark in government many elected officials have to spend money on something. I understand that the county already has three such vessels. One being, in the words of our last sheriff, a state of the art vessel that would fill the many marine needs of the county. Now Sheriff Cumming didn’t carelessly spend money. That boat was acquired with cash that inured to the county through a drug bust. He did joke about the fact that he an his deputies would now have to “exercise” the vessel.

What people don’t realize when you buy unnecessary equipment, like what our prior fire chief was mandated to do by the commissioners, that it takes a lot of additional money and labor costs to keep that equipment in proper working condition.

As a taxpayer, I have some skin in the game, and at a meeting about a year ago our new sheriff admitted on a scale of one to five that the drug problem on Orcas was a five. Frankly, I am for the legalization of drugs, as this war on drugs thing has been perpetuated on society by citizens and bureaucrats alike with billions of wasted dollars. But if you are really engaged in this wonderful excuse to harm your fellow man, rather than driving around the county in newly acquired toys, make more than five arrests a year, stamping out the apparent Orcas drug plague.

Walt Corbin

Olga