Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1906-02-28
A Communication.
Editors Kennebec Journal:

Editors Kennebec Journal:
In the present contest of would be
nominees for the Office of County Com
missioner. it seems fitting that the at
| tentiOn of the voters and taxpayers
should be called to the qualifications
| required in the man who can fittingly
enter upon and fill the office.
1t is too generally assumed that any
honest man of common sense and COM
| mon school education is fitted to be a
County Commissioner, and that this is
an office that belongs to the farmers"
This is all wrong. No Office belongs to
| any class, trade or profession. A man
| may be the best farmer and as a farm
er model of fitness, and yet be utterly
unit for an Office of entirely different
requirements. After long experience
as farmer. know this.
The duty rests on every voter to con-
slider first the duties devolvinG on the
office and then to seek the man who is
best fitted to perform such duties and
while he does not seek or want the
office. can and will accept it. and hav-
ing found such man, then aid in elect
ing the man for the place and not in
giving the place TO the man who
wants ii or needs it,
| assume no man or class of men is
broad enough to do the best service in
all the duties of County Commissioners.
Their duties require, at least, threefold
special fitness:
l. They have the management for
the people and taxpayers of the Coun-
~ of a general business amounting to
some $4,000 each year.
H.. They sit as a court to which is
submitted questions involving law and
equity, which often prove before reach
ing final determination to test the
ability of our Supreme Court in clear
ing the legal tangles involved.
Ill They have the care and over
sight of the so called State roads and
the examination and approval of the
work wrought under the law author
izing such roads, involving as it does
| a knowledge of engineering and scien-
tific road building; also care of the
County buildings.
To fill these requirements properly
we should have:
l. An experienced business man and
accountant to whose management we
similar nature and amount.
.. a man of sound legal mind and
| training who could best serve us in the
legal section of their duties.
3. 4 competent civil engineer, who
| by careful and critical supervision
| would secure for us the proper and
| most profitable expenditure of the
money appropriated by the towns and
| contributed by the State for good
| roads. too much of which is now frit-
tered away by the local officers who ex-
pend it.
Men having these qualifications for
| the Office could properly attend to the
duties of the office in the time for
which they would be fairly COM
pcnsatcd by the present salary of 81 900
per year. and it would be but fair pay
for such service as the county needs.
| 1t would be Il case of the office seeking
the man and the best availab BILE man.
and the fact that another man wanted
the office or needed it, would be the
best evidence he was not the man for
| the place, but was more likely one who
could not secure employment at $500 in
any private business. The change
| from S-.Vo per ddy 10 :l,o"V per year as
a Commissioners compensation was not
| for graft" but to compensate for in
| creased importance of duties and to
secure the service of better men. Is the
| standard too high? If not. let us find
the man who is best available to fill the
requirements, and make him our nomi-
nee even though he does not want it or
| need it,
Shall not Kennebec set this standard
and follow it? X.