Grab your wallets - now...

Is anyone else sick about what has been happening at, and to, the McHenry County Mental Health Board (Board)?

Well, grab your wallets, folks, and lock up those checkbooks. (If only that would work...)

The Board can't even hire its new Executive Director by itself. According to the Northwest Herald this morning, the Board has passed the ball to The Meyers Group to negotiate a deal with its finalist for the top dog's (employee) position.

Whatever happened to the day when an employer said "This is the deal. These are the terms. Here's what we are paying. Want the job?"

Instead, this Board passes the buck (and the bucks) to a hired gun. Any smart candidate knows that's exactly what he's dealing with - a hired gun. He'll get the best offer out of them that he can, and then he (or she) will raise the ante while holding the pen, (almost) ready to sign.

If taxpayers are having apoplexy over the pay package of the McHenry County College president, wait until they get a dose of what's ahead at the Mental Health Board.

That's the organization that has been bashed to the ground time after time by the County Board, the Mental Health Board itself, and the daily newspaper in our county.

The paper continues to slam the former attorney for the Board, rather than directing its vengeance at the Board itself. I seriously doubt that Frank Gosser overbilled the Board. The Board had to know that their directions in legal matters were going to cost money. Did they think he would work for free? Did the Board just turn him loose on legal problems, such as defending itself against the lawsuit by The Advantage Group (TAG), and think he'd just give them his legal time? Then some got their panties in a wad, when Gosser recommended against paying the last $49,000 to TAG.

I hope Attorney Gosser gets every dollar owed to him.

We can only hope that the Board has learned its lesson and places strict limits on work and billing by its new legal representative.

But what's left at the Mental Health Board that they need to pay a consulting firm to negotiate the hiring of a new Executive Director. The Board had 40-50-60 employees, who did a great job organizing and providing mental health services to clients in McHenry County. The Board is down to about 17 employees now and heading lower, as several employees are being shown the door and are to be gone by November 30. The building at 620 Dakota Street in Crystal Lake will be a ghost town.