The bad idea of adding two more Douglas County commissioners as published Aug. 25 by Elliott Wenzler is an article that reads more like a story or allegory than a news article; albeit it's provided with legitimate sources - Commissioners George Teal and Abe Laydon, and Parker Mayor Jeff Toborg. This bad idea is (not surprisingly) based on a request to county staff from Commissioner Lora Thomas. The article could have ended after its clear explanation of why we have three county commissioners, thank you very much, but instead proceeded to quote previous Adams County Commissioner Erik Hansen to opine about the benefits which do not grasp the root causes of having five versus three commissioners. The elephant in the room for anyone following Douglas County politics is our seven-member school board who are not associated with a political party. How's that working out for us? Just note the amount of controversy over the members themselves, not to mention their divisiveness over just about every issue except asking for more money as in the upcoming bond issue. If possible, we should be consider reducing our school board to three members.

Instead of arguing with the points made by the Adams County commissioner or boring you with the extensive dealings I've had with Colorado county governments let me simply define my two high level empirical findings. First, it's important to know that the Douglas County government with three members is the best in Colorado, and second, there's no comparison between the decisive deliberation of three commissioners (good, bad, or ugly) versus the divisive and political environment of having five.

Additionally, there are three reasons why this idea of adding two commissioners is before you in the first place and why it could only have come from Thomas who and can't run for another term. First, the other commissioners George and Abe would never have introduced such a bad idea (just ask them or read Elliott's article). Second, creating these additional positions could possibly give Lora wiggle room for running again after her present term expires and don't put personal motives past her. Third, the change would be permanent and Lora apparently only cares about her problem of eliminating the current conflicts she consistently has with the other two commissioners; she doesn't seem to care about the long-term consequence of never being able to return to the best combination of having three commissioners.

Smith Young

Parker