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Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Spellman Forum Re-Cap 3-24-11

On Thursday 24, 2011 Supervisor Spellman met with residents of Copperopolis at his weekly forum at Snaps Coffee House in Town Square.
He discussed the Tuscany Hills Project and their anticipated 501 (c)3 and how it could potentially benefit the community at large with the possibility of a community building such as a library. He syas he feels “they (the Tuscany Developers) are showing the community their support.”
Revisiting the possibility that the Sheriff Office expects to see a 500K budget shortfall Spellman looked at the Planning Department budget of 1.5 million, of which 500k is allocated for consultants, which he pointed out were not from the area. With building down he felt that the 500k that is allocated for consultants can be put to better use at the Sheriff Office.
When asked if the BOS had created the positions of assistant CAO and office assistant after cutting 17% across the board, Spellman verified this and replied, “they (the Board of Supervisors) were unscrupulous” in their actions with regards to the creation of the two new positions at “a cost of approximately 175k per year “which equaled 8% of the projected shortfall” for the 10/11 budget.
Spellman brought up a letter to the Editor written recently by the owner of the Valley Springs Times, questioning why the county contract for legal ads had not been put out to bid since 2007. Spellman also stated that in order to bid on that contract the newspaper, not news site, must be printed in Calaveras County, calling into question the outsourcing of the Enterprise. Spellman also stated “as a steward for the tax payers dollars” that during the process of “looking into” the contract rules, the County discovered that they had been printing items that simply needed to be posted in public view, not printed in a newspaper and circulated, equaling a yearly savings of approximately 12k on ads.
According to Spellman, the Board of Supervisors voted 5-0 to op out of the travel expense reimbursement of p to $2,200/year; a savings to the County of 11k per year.

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