Matthews to Commissioners-elect: 'What Do You Want Us to Do?'

With the 2011 election in the books, the sitting Montgomery County Board of Commissioners has begun to prepare for its replacement.

Board Chairman James Matthews said he'd asked the heads of the all the county's departments to prepare brief "101 level" reports for that explained their roles in county government and the challenges they faced in the current budget environment.

"It's putting a little burden on [the department heads], but this is something that happens only ever four years or every eight years," Matthews said.

Matthews further encouraged the Commissioners-elect and the leaders of the county's departments to begin meeting and communicating with each other "so they don't come in here totally cold on January 3 at their swearing-in."

"I don't sense that there's going to be participation by [Richards or Shapiro], even in the passive sense of having them in the room, but I'm not speaking for them," Matthews said.

Matthews said he planned to meet with the incoming Commissioners to discuss specific aspects of the transition to a new county administration.

"What do they want us to do?" Matthews asked rhetorically. "They're going to come in for coffee some time next week and I'm going to ask them that question."

Among the items on the Board's agenda before the Commissioners-elect are seated is a presentation on the next county budget. Initially scheduled for next Tuesday, Nov. 15, the presentation is being rescheduled to accommodate the Harrisburg responsibilities of Shapiro, still serving as a state representative, and Commissioner Bruce L. Castor, who in the wake of the election campaign has a backlog of professional legal matters to address.

"I asked the judges of the various counties to put all my cases off until after the election, and they did…to the very next week," Castor said.

While most of the planning for the new administration is meant to ensure smooth continuity of government, there are also more mundane concerns: the offices of outgoing Commissioners Matthews and Joseph Hoeffel need to be repainted before Richards and Shapiro move in. 

"They can't have my office," joked Castor, who finished third in the election to retain a seat on the body. "That's going too far."

Notes: The board approved a contract with New York-based WeRecycle! to serve as the vendor for the county's electronics waste recycling program. The company has offered the county "up to 49 cents a pound" for old computers and other recycled electronic equipment discarded by county residents at collection events. The deal is expected to put about $70,000 per year into county coffers, according to Tim Hartman, executive director of the county's Waste System Authority. Hartman added that the types of equipment accepted at electronic recycling collections would be "increased threefold." He cited cellphones and computer peripherals such as printers as examples.