Miller believes county is in store for big things ahead
“The state of Holmes County is in excellent shape.”
Those were the first words out of Holmes County Commissioner Joe Miller’s mouth as he addressed a full house at the annual Holmes County Chamber of Commerce banquet at Carlisle Inn at Walnut Creek on Thursday, Nov. 10.
Considering that over the past several years it has been nothing but slicing and dicing for the county commissioners as they tried to make ends meet for the county budget, it was surely good news to hear something so positive coming from the mouth of one of the men who has had to make a lot of unpopular decisions with far fewer dollars around than in previous, more prosperous years.
“We are in better shape now than we have been for a long time,” said Miller. “Three years ago we started cutting, and when revenue began going down we started cutting. We cut $1.8 million out of a $10.5 million budget. We never screamed that we had a revenue problem, we knew we had a spending problem, and we cut the spending down. It is amazing how things are leveling off after we made some very hard decisions.”
Miller said there were many people in departments all over the county that began doing everything they could to cut costs. He singled out Tim Zimmerly and the Holmes County Sheriff’s Office as being the group which did the most when it came to cutting spending.
He also said that by removing the county from several organizations, Holmes County is now saving money where it had been spending quite a large amount prior.
Miller noted that parting with Medway, a drug enforcement agency that was doing work for Holmes County as well as several other counties, helped to save the county thousands of dollars. Their job of patrolling drug trafficking fell on the shoulders of Zimmerly’s crew, and the department has not disappointed, doing a very credible job where Medway left off.
“Medway is a class organization,” said Miller. “When the sheriff came to us and said he could save us money and do the job, we listened. It’s all about the money. Some were skeptical, but the sheriff has handled it very, very well and kept the drug dealers off the streets.”
The other source of savings came when the county removed itself from the Multi-County Juvenile Detention Center. A program which began in 1974, Miller said that the concept simply became expensive and outdated, with the county paying for room and board even when no juveniles existed.
“It became this big monster that got out of control,” said Miller. “We couldn’t continue that way. Again, it is not a bad organization. They took good care of our kids. It was just too expensive.”
In lieu of that organization, Holmes County Job & Family Services, led by Dan Jackson, and Judge Tom Lee and the Holmes County Juvenile Court system has stepped in and done a fantastic job of replacing Multi-County.
Miller noted that both of those maneuvers saved the county hundreds of thousands of dollars.
In addition, the county reduced its solid waste management district numbers vastly, instead outsourcing the solid waste, which allows the county to take care of the solid waste for a fraction of the cost it was at one time incurring.
Miller also paid special tribute to Pomerene Hospital, one of only a few county hospitals left in the state of Ohio.
“People don’t realize how important a hospital is to the county, and ours is owned by the county,” said Miller.
Miller said the Pomerene president and the board members have done a remarkable job of operating the hospital in the face of rising health care costs.
Another cost-saving procedure the county has undergone is to rid itself of much of the office space it was occupying. According to Miller, the county now has 6,000-square-feet less than it had two years ago, meaning far less heating and cooling costs.
He also said that the insurance for the county has changed, and while it is not the Cadillac of insurance benefits, it is still a group insurance that will benefit the members while helping reduce costs.
Miller said that as the commissioners continue to move toward closure of the landfill, the next goal is to bring in better infrastructure, something that he said is a necessity for a growing county.
Part of that growth seems to be on the verge of a new breakthrough in the oil and gas realm, with Chesapeake Energy making a huge number of proposals to purchase land rights and mine the rich deposits of oil and gas that lie underground in Holmes County.
Ohio State Representative Dave Hall touched on the upcoming boon of the oil and gas field, and said that while Chesapeake and other companies move in, the opportunity exists for the people of Holmes County to take full advantage of the peripheral opportunities which will surely come along with it.
He compared this time to the gold rush in California, noting that if Holmes County is ready, it can prosper greatly from the oil and gas rush of 2012.
“This is going to be a very, very good thing for Holmes County, and we need to embrace it,” said Hall. “Who made the big money when the gold rush came? It was the retailers. We need to figure out how we can connect with and provide service for these companies that will be coming in here. This is going to be a huge opportunity for us.”
Those were the first words out of Holmes County Commissioner Joe Miller’s mouth as he addressed a full house at the annual Holmes County Chamber of Commerce banquet at Carlisle Inn at Walnut Creek on Thursday, Nov. 10.
Considering that over the past several years it has been nothing but slicing and dicing for the county commissioners as they tried to make ends meet for the county budget, it was surely good news to hear something so positive coming from the mouth of one of the men who has had to make a lot of unpopular decisions with far fewer dollars around than in previous, more prosperous years.
“We are in better shape now than we have been for a long time,” said Miller. “Three years ago we started cutting, and when revenue began going down we started cutting. We cut $1.8 million out of a $10.5 million budget. We never screamed that we had a revenue problem, we knew we had a spending problem, and we cut the spending down. It is amazing how things are leveling off after we made some very hard decisions.”
Miller said there were many people in departments all over the county that began doing everything they could to cut costs. He singled out Tim Zimmerly and the Holmes County Sheriff’s Office as being the group which did the most when it came to cutting spending.
He also said that by removing the county from several organizations, Holmes County is now saving money where it had been spending quite a large amount prior.
Miller noted that parting with Medway, a drug enforcement agency that was doing work for Holmes County as well as several other counties, helped to save the county thousands of dollars. Their job of patrolling drug trafficking fell on the shoulders of Zimmerly’s crew, and the department has not disappointed, doing a very credible job where Medway left off.
“Medway is a class organization,” said Miller. “When the sheriff came to us and said he could save us money and do the job, we listened. It’s all about the money. Some were skeptical, but the sheriff has handled it very, very well and kept the drug dealers off the streets.”
The other source of savings came when the county removed itself from the Multi-County Juvenile Detention Center. A program which began in 1974, Miller said that the concept simply became expensive and outdated, with the county paying for room and board even when no juveniles existed.
“It became this big monster that got out of control,” said Miller. “We couldn’t continue that way. Again, it is not a bad organization. They took good care of our kids. It was just too expensive.”
In lieu of that organization, Holmes County Job & Family Services, led by Dan Jackson, and Judge Tom Lee and the Holmes County Juvenile Court system has stepped in and done a fantastic job of replacing Multi-County.
Miller noted that both of those maneuvers saved the county hundreds of thousands of dollars.
In addition, the county reduced its solid waste management district numbers vastly, instead outsourcing the solid waste, which allows the county to take care of the solid waste for a fraction of the cost it was at one time incurring.
Miller also paid special tribute to Pomerene Hospital, one of only a few county hospitals left in the state of Ohio.
“People don’t realize how important a hospital is to the county, and ours is owned by the county,” said Miller.
Miller said the Pomerene president and the board members have done a remarkable job of operating the hospital in the face of rising health care costs.
Another cost-saving procedure the county has undergone is to rid itself of much of the office space it was occupying. According to Miller, the county now has 6,000-square-feet less than it had two years ago, meaning far less heating and cooling costs.
He also said that the insurance for the county has changed, and while it is not the Cadillac of insurance benefits, it is still a group insurance that will benefit the members while helping reduce costs.
Miller said that as the commissioners continue to move toward closure of the landfill, the next goal is to bring in better infrastructure, something that he said is a necessity for a growing county.
Part of that growth seems to be on the verge of a new breakthrough in the oil and gas realm, with Chesapeake Energy making a huge number of proposals to purchase land rights and mine the rich deposits of oil and gas that lie underground in Holmes County.
Ohio State Representative Dave Hall touched on the upcoming boon of the oil and gas field, and said that while Chesapeake and other companies move in, the opportunity exists for the people of Holmes County to take full advantage of the peripheral opportunities which will surely come along with it.
He compared this time to the gold rush in California, noting that if Holmes County is ready, it can prosper greatly from the oil and gas rush of 2012.
“This is going to be a very, very good thing for Holmes County, and we need to embrace it,” said Hall. “Who made the big money when the gold rush came? It was the retailers. We need to figure out how we can connect with and provide service for these companies that will be coming in here. This is going to be a huge opportunity for us.”
Published: November 14, 2011
