Update on my Pierce County Human Services Research

So, after spending countless hours trying to somehow sift through the Pierce County, Washington State website in order to find information about human services and community empowerment, I have finally had to just stop trying to find the information on my own. I cannot go much further without driving myself COMPLETELY INSANE. I am going to share with you some of the most alarming conclusions I came to through my own research, and the questions I will be asking my local government until I get some answers.

Reading Over the Pierce County 2018 Human Services Document

It almost makes me want to vomit. Please, bear with me. You may think i am being harsh and that Pierce County is some poor underfunded community, but I was appalled to find it is absolutely NOT. So let’s talk about the 2018 budget which is

324.9 million dollars wealthy.

First, most intriguing is the fact that instead of being planned yearly on some recorded and easily viewable schedule these meetings to discuss the public budget are held on November of 2017 without any public notification what-so-ever. Let me mention that last year at least from what I can find online, the hearings were some time around. April/May and the final hearing for public comment held in June.
What efforts are being made to ensure those not employed by local government in Pierce County, are able to comment? How are they expected to know when the community is eligible to participate based on this system in place now?

They Taught us how to Format Documents in Highschool... These Files Aren’t Even Dated?

We discovered in my last post that Pierce County knows very well how to put together a website to increase business engagement (https://edbtacomapierce.org/); One, that is attractive, clear cut, and easy to follow. Why is it then that all of the county files are loosley formatted, and it is unclear where to find the date of adoption or proposal on many of these documents.
Pierce County even reports:

That is has received the Distinguished Budget Presentation Award from the Government Finance Officers Association for the Annual Budget since 1987, ‘meeting the highest principles of government budgeting’.
But here, we DO NOT see that reflected in the 2018 budget presentation powerpoint slideshow.


I was making better powerpoint presentations about Tupac when I was in the 5th grade.


Is there something I am missing here?

71 Million Dollars for Human Services? Without a Citizen Participation Plan?

This is probably my key issue and reason for outrage is an issue of accountability. It seems as though many of these documents which are supposed to be made available for public record, have gone up without much care or concern. As if the county already knows nobody will be checking, and if they do... well, good luck with that. Considering the consolidated plan for P.C 2015-2019 even goes so far as to list for every section the Code of Federal Regulations Policies it is supposed to be meeting, and clearly skips out on many of the CFR requirements. For example, CFR 91.200(c) states:


So why is it that the Pierce County Consolidated Plan document only contains this:

As it's citizen participation plan?


Totally left out any intentions to change the plan for the future or to ensure the public is more involved with the community development process moving forward. With a 71 million dollar budget, you would think that any plans for public participation would be possible. Not to mention how many millions are spent on administrative services for Pierce County... I mean I have made FREE community engagement strategies for OHM back last summer, this kind of shit is pretty unacceptable.

How can you justify 71 million dollars on human services, and literally no resources for citizen participation? What would even be the point of that?

To get my questions answered, I am planning to email and call several people from the Pierce County Human Services department and from wherever else I can find that might be able to sit down and chat with me a bit about these issues I have discovered. Whether I am able to speak to someone in person, over email or over the phone, I will be keeping a record of it on Steemit to finally start holding the responsible parties accountable(I hope) and also to gain feedback and help others who might be thinking about standing up to their local policymakers as well.


What are your thoughts, beliefs, opinions, or experiences with local government? What do you think about what I have found so far? What questions would you have? Any feedback as always is greatly appreciated. Also be on the lookout for ICC as our first project implementation initiates in January 2018!