Happy weekend to you Yokels! On the front page of the FNP today there is a nice little story entitled: “Delauter Backs Off Of Leasing Strategy”. We’ve written about his workshop and were all so skeptical on how building a bunch of schools now and then incurring $102 million extra in debt was advantageous. Somehow between that meeting and today the plan was re-written to include “only” $50 million more in payments. Still a perplexing proposal from someone who claims to “govern like a taxpayer today.” Now who do you think Kirby is blaming for the dissolution of his idea? We are sure you don’t have to think too hard on that one!

“There was a disagreement on the finances and costs associated with the possibility of privately funded schools,” Delauter wrote in Friday’s news release. “We have been dealing with concerns for school construction for the past 20 years. I was diligently seeking ways to build schools in the future with the least amount of impact on the Frederick County taxpayers. It has become clear to me that the County Executive is stuck in yesterday’s thinking where you always turn to the taxpayers to pay for everything. I am truly sorry to the taxpayers that we were not able to work to find new solutions to an old problem.”

How in Poseidon’s blue ocean is this plan not turning to the taxpayers?! Just because we aren’t putting the money up right this very second, doesn’t mean we aren’t going to being paying out the wazoo for this later! It’s clear from every meeting and discussion of this topic this idea will cost us more. Not today, but surely tomorrow. WAIT! Have we finally discerned the meaning of the “govern like a taxpayer today” slogan! I think we have. Whew, that took a few years but we finally cracked the code!

Now, with this idea laid to rest, hopefully some more realistic solutions can be found to solve this very real problem. And quickly because this same article ended with this:

Delauter has said he’s seriously considering running against Gardner for the county executive spot in 2018.