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Commissioners respond to call for switch for unit system In an interview with The South Alabamian, two of Washington County's longest serving commissioners, Willie Dixon (1992) and Hilton Robbins (1994), disagreed with some of the conclusions drawn at the meeting of concerned citizens on May 15. When asked his basic opposition to the unit system, Robbins said, "Well, we have spoken to several different commissioners in different counties and frankly, there are pros and cons to the system. We were told by Clarke County commissioners that the unit system does not save money and the people get less service." "That (unit system) won't work in this county," was Dixon's reply. "We have one-third to onehalf of the citizens here who still live on dirt roads." Dixon went on to explain that under the unit system, the maintenance is done by scheduled work order and if a piece of road has just been graded and a heavy rain comes, then the schedule would dictate that the grader would be somewhere else; and the operator can't double back and rework. "Once you maintain," he said, "you can't go back." Commissioner Robbins had the same reaction to scheduled work orders. As to comments from the May 15 meeting that Washington County didn't need eight motor graders, he asked, "If you get rid of half the graders, are you going to get rid of half the dirt roads?" Commissioner Dixon believes that even with a unit system, citizens will still look to the commissioner in their district to keep up the roads. Commissioner Robbins emphasized that as he sees it, Washington County already operates on a modified unit system. He cited the dirt work on the health department site where all districts had trucks working under the supervision of the county engineer. And he added, "If one of us has an emergency, say if Allen (Commissioner Allen Bailey) has an emergency, I or one of the other commissioners pitch in and help." He said the five districts along with the county engineer's department, work cooperatively. There was a good deal of discussion on May 15 about the present purchasing system in Washington County. The opinion was expressed that having a central purchasing system where separate individuals requisition, receive, approve and pay for a purchase, would be an improvement over the present system. The present situation is that each commissioner requisitions, receives and approves payment, while the check is signed by the chairman of the commission who never sees what he writes the check for. Commissioner Robbins pointed out that the higher cost items like gasoline, fuel oil, tires and asphalt are all bid. Robbins believes that the experience of the commissioners in knowing where to get the best price and the best service for broken equipment parts results in a savings to the county. In his opinion, the central purchasing system would be both slow and cumbersome, delaying repairs. When the matter of the county's indebtedness was brought up, both Commissioner Dixon and Commissioner Robbins emphasized that the $1,969,596.53 which shows up as lease purchase contracts was not a "true" debt. They explained that equipment is leased at the beginning of a year with interest at 3.25 percent (estimate) and at the end of the year, the equipment is sold with the county being out only the interest. "We always sell these at the best deal," Dixon said, and with this system "we never have a major expense."
When asked if commissioners should spend the major part of their time dealing with seeking industry, housing, health and the general betterment of Washington County rather than overseeing road crews, Dixon said, "We don't spend the major part of our time on road supervision, I'd say it's more like 10 percent."
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