Guest Post on WILCO Commissioners Court

3 minutes at Commissioner Court Mtg  7 June 2016

I am Bill Kelberlau from Williamson County. I am a 6^th generation Texan.   I am a retired Navy CAPTAIN with over 25 years of active and reserve duty, and a decorated war veteran. For those who do not know, a Navy CAPTAIN is the same as a full bird Colonel. I am also retired from industry, GTE, Texas Instruments, and Raytheon in many areas of management, engineering and customer service. I have been a part of Williamson County for over 37 years.

I have some comments on several items from the Comm Court Mtg  17 May 2016.

First, that same week Thursday the 19^th I had to turn around don't drown on the way out of my subdivision. As I stood watching the water I discussed with one of my neighbors items 25 & 26 which was followed by Item 22 being lumped in with a group of infrastructure items and quickly passed. CC made quick work of supporting a major corporation's profitability with WilCo citizens tax dollars by reprogramming 2013 bond money. Yet after more than 35 years WilCo has yet to spend a fraction of  $1.5 million it gave to the UPS project and make a decision regarding citizen safety.

Agenda items and discussion continued into other subjects where in many items  had in common the issue of how decisions are made and policy and procedures that should be addressed to improve the decision and management processes within WilCo.

The county atty addressing purchasing contracts and issues was asked what is the historical review process for purchasing contracts and his response was, “all over the map.”  What?   There is no formal process that connects the dots between multitudes of contracts and assesses the potential cumulative risks and or compounding liabilities being incurred?  Is it safe to assume that since there is no evaluation of these risks there is also no risk management process in place?

Commissioner Long made a comment about taking a more in depth look at government relationships with regard to overreach. I applaud this idea. Every time Grant money flows there is a contract.  The last 2-3 pages of each contract is loaded with over reach and or strings attached. However, does WilCo not know the extent or cumulative impact of its risks and liabilities with regard to these hundreds of grants already accepted?

Debt service: NPV analysis is only one analysis to evaluate financial decisions. One must also do future value or future cost analysis to understand the impact of decisions. Citizen's incomes being increased at the 1-2% CPI rate can't afford the continued 10% compounding each year for taxes, insurance, regulatory costs etc that are not part of CPI. State and local debt exceeds national debt and WilCo has the highest per capita debt of all counties in Texas. We can have a good credit rating with a whole lot less debt. What important opportunities are being lost into debt service?

Zero Based Budgeting, Management by Objectives and Priorities, Internal Rate of return, PERT program management, CPM critical path analysis, future cost of not making a decision (dollars, lives), Total Cost of Ownership, technology forecasts and impact, unintended consequences (squeezing the balloon), Analysis of Alternatives, convenience versus doing whats right, Cost Benefit analyses, risk assessment, risk analysis, cost risk Monte Carlo evaluation,  and many more proven management tools.

It appears obvious WilCo is long overdue for implementing 20^th century proven good management principles and decision making processes.

Let's start with Principle.

Is it Constitutional, is it the Truth and Cui Bono, who benefits.