Praise for Jim Hall Council Chair

Yes the title is correct and no I'm not on drugs other than those prescribed by my physician.. But man are they great.. Ok now seriously at last nights council meeting. Nona Bowman wanted to open up a dialogue about how the county can engage with other entities in meeting the long term goals of the county's vision or something to that effect. It turned into a we need to get the county to tell the lab to change it's mission and get more funding type of thing. Several people came up and made comments to that effect and several made comments about how the lab doesn't listen to it's employees or the citizens of LA County. (No big surprise there). Nona also mentioned that several of her constituents felt that they couldn't attend the meeting to support their concerns because the have been directed to not speak directly to elected officials. (yet another thing that doesn't surprise me.) Well when it came down to it most people said that we need to defer to our congressional delegation and our local partners in the state. Once councilor Mike Wheeler I believe said that we would have some difficulty because people look at Los Alamos unfavorably. True. My comments were that the lab needs to continue to be there and that it's mission needs to change and it needs to be managed properly. I also stated that I thought it was not the business of the County Council to deal with this issue as we had no control over DOE or NNSA and that we needed to take care of the county. If we did anything for the lab it would not achieve the true autonomy that Los Alamos needs to have to truly become a separate Entity from the lab. Well after all of the councilors made their remarks, Chairman Hall spoke up. He basically said that it is the labs responsibility to take care of what the Lab needs and not the business of Local County Government. He stated the Council's job is to run the County and take care of the business of the people. I had to hold my self down from jumping up and screaming "Yeah You go Jim you tell em" I didn't and we moved on to other agenda items. Mainly the budget which Councilor Gibson stated he couldn't support because it was nothing more than the same old thing. True it is just that with no plans for the future and that it wasn't in the best interest of the people. He stated that most of the funds were allocated for the running of the government (am I supposed to capitalize government?) I agree but since this budget was already in place and the time to revise it would severely cut into the business of the council for the next several months it wouldn't be a good idea to try to fix it now. I got up and spoke up to that effect and also questioned why the 150 thousand was removed for community branding which I think we need in order to pull the town out from under the shadow of the lab and it's failures of the past 10 years. I reminded that we've got through the first 60 years now what are we going to do for the next 60 years? By the way on a side note the meeting ended before 10pm yes before... So I give kudos to Chairman Hall for both of the things he did last night that I felt were very good. Keeping the County out of the business of the Lab and getting out early.