The Sad State of Politics in King George, Virginia

Since I'm on a politics rant for today regarding the shunning of Ruby Brabo, why not add another one.Communication. Specifically, the lack of. A neighboring school lost a building in a fire and I had an idea I wanted to share. A possible solution to their problem that our County might be able to help with. So I shared that idea with my local leaders. Since I wasn't sure who was in charge of what, I shared with both the Board of Supervisors and the School Board. That's a total of ten people. Here they are along with their email addresses:

School Board

Dahlgren District - Ken Novell - knovell@kgcs.k12.va.us
James Madison District - Kristin Tolliver - ktolliver@kgcs.k12.va.us
James Monroe District - T. C. Collins - tcollins@kgcs.k12.va.us
Shiloh District - Mike Rose - mrose2@kgcs.k12.va.us
At-Large District - John Davis - jdavis@kgcs.k12.va.us

Board of Supervisors
Dahlgren District -Ruby Brabo - rubyb@co.kinggeorge.state.va.us
James Madison District -Joe Grzeika - jgrzeika@co.kinggeorge.state.va.us
James Monroe District -Jim Howard - jhoward@co.kinggeorge.state.va.us

Shiloh District -Cedell Brooks - cbfh98@verizon.net

At-Large District -Dale Sisson - sisson4kg@msn.com

So like I said, I sent them an email with my idea. All of those that responded were polite and professional about it. But not everyone responded. I got responses from:

• John Davis
• Dale Sisson
• Mike Rose
• Ruby Brabo
• Joe Grzeika

That's five people out of ten. Half of the people I sent a message to responded. To me, this is the primary source of the problem we have within our local government; nobody wants to communicate. I mean, come on people, let's move into the present where the Pony Express is a footrace and not the main communication line with the west coast. Let's move into the present where we hear about news before it's even on the news. Let's move into the present where people have cameras, video recorders, computers, telephones, and navigation systems in their pocket. Let's move into the present where communication is mandatory to move forward.

I fell the lack of communication coming from our leadership is the source of our problem. These old farts sitting on the board never had to talk about what they did in the past. Nobody came to the meetings so they never needed to worry about explaining why they did something. Well guess what, now everyone knows and they know as soon as you do it. So when one individual decides to openly communicate with the very citizens that voted them in, the rest of the group gets nervous and decides to ostracize them. Ever hear of the five monkeys and the banana on a ladder? Welcome to the paradigm of bad politics. Let's stop spraying cold water and work together to get the banana.