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Sonoma County, a diverse county of over one million acres is famed for its agriculture industry and recreation boasting a booming economy and a unique lifestyle for its citizens described by the famed Luther Burbank as the chosen spot of all the earth. Sonoma County is the place

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to live, work and play as we move into the 21st century. Led by the forward looking philosophy of its governing bodies. Sonoma County's 340,000 residents are a harmonious, successful blend of ethnic and economic backgrounds. We invite you to take a closer look at Sonoma County in

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the nineties with your host Rich McGlinchey, How you doing everybody? Welcome to another edition of Sonoma County in the nineties on location on location in a beautiful spot. We're at the terrace area of the john Ash and company restaurant, which is at vintners in north of

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santa rosa. I'm not going to be any more specific than that because I want the gentleman sitting here with me, john Duffy, the owner and operator of vintners in to tell you a little bit about it. Where is vintners in and how do they get here?

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Okay, Vintners in is very centrally located. It's right in the center of Sonoma County to get here from san Francisco. It's one hour north of the Golden Gate Bridge. Get off at the river road exit. Uh, take a left on the river road. Um, go for

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just a couple of seconds or a half a minute and you're at Barnes road turned down Barnes road and the inn and the restaurant is right there. Yeah, beautiful spots. Ladies and gentlemen, I really wish you could all be with us here today because the vendors

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in the john Ashton company restaurant location. Uh and I'm gonna have him tell you about the setting in a moment, but the location is just one of the most exquisite. It's in all the counties and if you haven't seen it, I would certainly suggest that you

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plan to do so sometime soon. And in regard to that, describe the setting for us. Well, we're set out in 50 acres, 45 acres of vineyard and five acres of the property itself um were again centrally located in the county and you're surrounded by vineyards. A

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lot of landscaping. The buildings are of the Provence. All style. Um and that's pretty much what it looks like. Tell us about, you know, it's Provence is where you you've got a lot of your ideas. But what's the style of the architecture? Didn't you mention french

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mediterranean or something of that nature? Yes, it is french mediterranean and then specifically uh, from the Provence area of France and the characteristics of that our tile roofs, stucco walls, arched windows and a lot of terracotta tile. Okay, so that's the architecture of the style you

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mentioned to me recently in our conversation that you picked me up on my geography provinces south of the city of paris near the, I guess near the mediterranean right way way south, right on the coast and in the southeast corner of France. How about the, in

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itself, john, it's just a beautiful place. How many rooms, accommodations you have? There's 44 rooms and of course also we have conference rooms in there for business meetings, but the 44 rooms or guest rooms. Um, rate wise, we're in approximately the 118 $250 range. Um, and

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that's what's there. That's, that's part of it. That's, that's the, that's the brutal part, the cost. But I mean the situation in the setting and the once again, the word ambience here is exquisite. It's, it's quite unusual. Uh, you just said that there's a around you

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now, what is this grapes all around here? How much of their grapes are there? 45 acres of grapes? And we have two varieties, chardonnay and sauvignon blanc that we sell to local wineries like ken, would Hannah Kendall Jackson. Okay, now there's something here that should be

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said, I realize that you are not the winery, but you're producing these grapes, you're sending them to these wineries and according to my information here, you won a lot of awards or you and they combined have won a lot of awards at the Sonoma County Harvest

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Fair and throughout the state actually. But the people that have really won the awards are, are the wineries that have used our grapes in it. And then in turn they have bottled the wine under, under a label, our label, like the john Ashe label and the

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vintners in label. So they, they're the guys that have won the awards and we've never entered in it per se, but are grapes have been in those award winning wines? You know, we got, we got to digress for just a minute. You told me something earlier

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that I think the audience has to know, give us a little bit of your background before you became the owner of vintners in well, years ago, like 10, 10, 12 years ago, I lived down in the city and I was an executive with the company and

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uh my background is in uh nuclear engineering, mechanical engineering business and we had a company down there that we eventually took public and was very successful. And then we came up here kind of as a retirement and started into this project and the project got bigger

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and bigger and this is where we are at now. I think this is fascinating. A former nuclear physics chief comes to Sonoma County, discovers the beauty of it, decides to go to France and get a bunch of ideas and comes back and incorporate his own ideas

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and build a magnificent end up here. I don't remember exactly when did the in open The end we built, we started the building of the end in the latter part of 1983 and the Inn opened in June 1984-94. Now, one of the things you mentioned earlier

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to that I think should be interesting audience. You say you have conference facilities out here. Tell us a little about that. Well what we've done is we found that a lot of the guests on the weekend came to us afterwards and said that they'd like to

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do conferences here during the week. So what we did is we converted part of the end into a conference area and then we already had one initial conference room in the original plan. Then what we found is this, that there was a real strong market for

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executive conferences and by the nature and the ambience of the facility, It really lends itself to groups that come up here for real heavy duty uh, planning type meetings. So typically what we'll see is executive groups in the 10-20 range, maybe as high as 30 that

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come in for strategic planning meetings. Um, and that type of thing. Um, you know, the, the design, the whole design, the whole thing is, is beautiful. It's quite unusual. You must have been acknowledged one of some awards or so, haven't you? Yes, we have one landscape

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Awards. Uh, and a number of awards as time has gone on. Probably some of the important recognition is like the triple A four diamond award. And that's yes, that's a real important one because we're always amazed at how many people use the triple a book. So

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a lot of people coming through that. So you have a swimming. I'm looking to brochure, you have a swimming pool there and then of course there's a beautiful fountain you talked about. Um what are some of the other features of the place? It's, how many buildings

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are there? Well the lodging buildings, there's three separate lodging buildings and of course that makes it different than a typical hotel. That was just a large building. So there there's three buildings with 15 rooms and 15 and then 14 rooms. Um and then there's one central

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building where you have breakfast in the morning. Okay. And that's included in with with the room and also this conference facilities in that. So that's the layout of the place. Um there's that large sun deck and spa area and then there's just pathways that you can

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walk around and then of course certain guests just wander out in the vineyards also. And so that's very nice. Thank you very much for inviting us out to film our programs out here. As I said earlier, we couldn't have found a more beautiful setting. We certainly

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couldn't have found any more cooperative people. My accommodation to you and to Jeff maduro. Ladies and gentlemen, in just a few moments, we're going to be coming back, we're talking to Ron, Norick, the deputy county administrator for Sonoma County. We're gonna talk about the reorganization of

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Sonoma County governments very important. You might be very interested in what they have to say. First this important message in an emergency when seconds count. We're trained to look for medical alerts emblem. A call to medical alerts emergency center gives us vital information about conditions, medicines,

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physician and family information that helps us give fast accurate treatment. That saves lives millions worldwide depend on medic alert protection to learn more. Ask your pharmacist or call 1 800 I. D. Alert. That's 1 800 I. D. Alert. Welcome back to this edition of Sonoma County

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the 90s on location and the terrorists of the John Ash and Company restaurant at Vintners in. We're gonna be talking to Ron pure. He's a deputy county administrator, a friend of mine for the last several years. He's been charged with a really important job many many

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times. But certainly lately we're talking about county government reorganization. If you've been out in space for the last few months, you probably may not know. But most everyone else knows that the state recently passed legislation which they I say usurped proud Martin might have another word.

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$2.6 billion dollars from the counties to go to the schools. Now this put the counties in a really bad situation in many cases and so as a result they've had to look at all kinds of innovative methods of trying to reduce their own expenses and keep

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the services that you all demand. Ron. I thank you very much for taking the time to be here and secondarily, I think that you've been charged with one heck of a responsibility here. But I guess people really want to know in addition to the money deal.

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Why did the county decide to reorganize? That's a very good question. Rich and our reasons for wanting to reorganize go back to those of necessity and an opportunity to do our job better. There are three factors that lead up to this and one you've hit upon

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budget economics. Very, very key factor. The second is a relaxation of some of the state controls that have historically been pressured on counties dictating how we organize our services. And thirdly, has been upwelling of community support to make our services more user friendly. These three factors

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have somewhat merged to, to make the timing and the opportunity now to reorganize. If we ever are to achieve improvements in county government services. Let me give you a little background if I, if I may, you mentioned all the counties in California are in the same

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pinch. And that's, that's true. All 57 other counties in the other 57 counties in the state of California along with Sonoma County basically are organized along very similar lines. And over the years, these reorganization directives have come to us from Sacramento so that our county bureaucracies

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and our county organizations match up or line up if you will with the similar type of organization that exists in sacramento, for instance, the state has a state Department of Health services. We have a county Department of Health Services. The state has a department of Mental

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health services. They require us to have a Department of Mental health services. The state has a Department of Agriculture, we have a county Department of Agriculture Services and it goes on and on for a large degree. Our county bureaucracy parallels that of the state organization and

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that type of organization was not set up to benefit the person who uses the services. That type of organization was set up to help the state control audit and dictate how we can, how we handle the state monies that they provide to us with the major

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state budgetary crisis that California is facing. State government has had to cut back its funding, including the funding that it provides to county governments. You mentioned 2.6 billion statewide. Let's put that in local terms. What that means to Sonoma County is that for each year from

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from this this year forward, Sonoma County will lose a full one third Of its property tax revenues. That will go to the state of California instead of back to the local taxpayer that represents over $28 million about but there's a silver lining. If there is one

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to the, there is a silver lining to the state cut back funds along with the state cut back of funds has been a corollary cutback in the state mandates on county government as to how we have to organize and structure our services. So that creates an

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opportunity for us to reorganize our structures. In addition, we've been trying to deal with the last number of years in spite of the state mandates dictating our organizational structure with how we can best provide our services to be more focused at the, at the local user

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rather than being focused to make it easy for the state to to control us these three factors, budget realities, relaxation of state controls and our own local desire to try to do our job better have finally merged together into an opportunity to reorganize county government with

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support in sacramento and with the support at the local, at the, at the local level. You know something Ron you've been a county administrator for another county yourself. So you've you've been where tired, friend Tom Shachtman is right now. Um four years and I don't know

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how many years the state has been mandating program after program after program and telling them, oh, it's okay, we're gonna pay most of the money. But eventually we're paying the whole thing. So you say they have relaxed some of those mandates that definitely is, as you

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said, the the right side of the picture. But let me ask you this, what were the goals of our own particular reorganization? The goals of our reorganization were threefold in nature. One was to improve the cost effectiveness of our services. Secondly, was attempt to consolidate county

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government services to make our bureaucracy smaller and and more responsive to the user. And third was to organize or reorganize our county services to be what we've termed client focus. That is aimed at making it easy for the for the citizen, making it easy for the

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user of the service to gain access into the system of county government services. Well, we'll give some examples in in in a little bit rich if the opportunity presents itself. The thing I wanted to throw right here over that is what is actually being reorganized. I

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think you can fairly say almost a whole of county government. It's it's a major undertaking that's, that's unfolding as as as we speak within the past month. The board of supervisors has acted upon recommendations from various committees That and several 100 recommendations from various committees that

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will result in Sonoma County, reducing the number of departments that it now has from 41 to 31, which that's a 25% reduction in the number of county and county departments. And we think that can be achieved while yet providing more effective services to the public. Let

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me give you some examples of the kinds of reorganizations that we're proposing and that in fact are already being developed from an implementation standpoint now that we've we've lost some of the state state controls in the area of health services. We're proposing to merge the department

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of Public health with the Department of mental health services and to include the county drug and alcohol services as as as well. So we have one integrated department instead of several integrate department, several separate departments. Haven't you also thought about putting the community hospital in that?

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I don't know if you're going to but you talked about it and that's definitely on the drawing board. That was a part of the original proposal. However, it was felt that community hospital has some other major initiatives underway at the present time that need to be

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brought further to conclusion before it becomes a part of this, of this process. The ultimate objective then would be to have a centralized system of providing health care to the individual. One access point to the person who needs health care instead of having to go 2

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to 1 organizational unit for dealing with problems perhaps of of mental illness. Another organization to deal with problems of alcohol or substance drug abuse. Another organization to deal with physical ailments. Another organization to deal with preventative health services. So we're trying to deal with the whole

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person through one organizational system to make it easier for that person to gain access to the surface services that that he or she may require. All right, this is impressive and it sounds impressive, but here's the question, what will the public see? That's different. The public

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is going to see. We hope three or four things that are, that are different. First of all, it's gonna be better coordination between the left hand and county government and the right hand of county government if you will, by consolidating the management systems and the services,

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there will be less confusion for the public and less opportunity for the public to get different answers to the same questions or related questions that are now posed to different parts of the organization. Take for example, the person who presently requires a building permit presently that

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person needs to travel to the building inspection department, the county planning department, perhaps the county water agency, perhaps the county public works department, perhaps the county fire Department, perhaps several other locations as well, including environmental health. One of the other reorganization proposals that's, that's being developed

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is a complete development and permit center department which essentially consolidates all of those permitting processes under a consolidated single management structure so that the user simply presents himself or herself to one organizational entrance point and from that point, the person's proposal will be, will be serviced

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at one location and there is no longer the opportunity to get different answers from different parts of the organization because they will be under a single management system and and a single system of service to things here. I think the public would want to hear from

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you right now. How are the decisions reached and who was involved in the decision making process that these decisions were reached by involving everybody. And I really, I really say that um uh with with a sense of pride, the organizational effort did have to have a

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certain structure to deal with a wide variety of county services that we provide. The board used the county management that used the county employees. They use the employees unions. They used public ideas, they used the ideas of of of client groups that rely upon the county

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government government services. Essentially the board organized five functional committees to deal with each of the major areas of county government, for instance, health and human services, developmental services, um Justice services, general government services and fiscal services. Each of these five committees was comprised of county management

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employees and interested groups and was required to take broad public input into the process and develop recommendations to go before the board of supervisors. But the keystone I think of our process was board also designated 1/6 committee, a citizens advisory committee that was somewhat removed from

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the self interest if there are any involved in each of these functional areas of county government, they appointed an 11 member or designated an 11 member blue ribbon citizens advisory committee to serve as a checkpoint to serve as a challenge group. If you will to the

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recommendations that would come out of each of these five functional areas before they would be submitted to the board of supervisors. This this 11 member group included 10 members appointed by the board of supervisors and an 11th member appointed by representatives of county county employee labor

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organizations. Just to ensure full participation of all viewpoints into the process. Each of these six groups, the five functional committees and the citizen advisory committee held numerous well advertised public meetings and public public hearings to get the broadest possible input from the public and in the

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employees including rich of surveying each of the 4000 county employees in our in our organization to get to get their input and you would be surprised at the wealth of information that has to discuss by this bottoms up approach as to how we could reorganize and

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do our job better. It was literally amazing. All right. We're gonna pause right here for a minute. It was amazing. And I'm not trying to to listen the emphasis on that. We're gonna pause right here and have the station bring the public a public service announcement

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after we come back and talk to Ron Norick for a few minutes more about the reorganization or proposed reorganization of ceremony County government First. This important message. The energy saved by recycling just one aluminum can could operate a television set for three hours for every four

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ft of newspaper. You recycle one tree is saved. The energy saved by recycling just one glass bottle, could light a 100 watt bulb for four hours. It's good to recycle because the world can get trashed up and we don't want that to happen in our world

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by stuff that's recycled. Recycle the stuff you buy. Take it back. Welcome back to this edition of Sonoma County nineties on location the terrorists of john ash and company restaurant. And we're talking to Ron Pierrick, Deputy county administrator, former county administrator for another county in California

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who has been involved in the county government reorganization plan. And uh we're down to just a few minutes to cover some of these things. How far along are you in the process itself? The board has now acted upon all the recommendations from the various committees. They've

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made decisions on which the reorganization proposals to go forward with and it was most of those which were proposed. Um They within the last week, Rich the board appointed five new acting department heads to head up five new organizations that the consolidation of 14 previous county

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departments and those individuals will have the responsibility to bring together the final implementation steps of many of these major reorganization proposals. Some of the others we talked about including consolidating our human services functions, private industry council, the social services department area agency on aging and the

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veteran services office into a single department. Others involved consolidating our superior and municipal court administrative functions into a single organizational and and some of the others included consolidating our public works and airport departments into a single transportation department. Such innovative ideas like consolidating our telecommunications and

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our data processing and our mail carrier services into a single system so that we can move off of the paper transmission of information into more electronic information, transmission. Um maybe somewhere more mundane things like consolidating functions that previously were in separate departments such as maintaining the

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grounds around county buildings with the same crews that maintained the county parks. Uh and and and just a host of recommendations of this site, this type and they are on track. The board has given their approval for us to move forward. We'll give a progress report

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back to the board of supervisors about the first of december and by that time we should be able to report substantial progress toward the implementation of these recommendations were down to about a minute and I'm not gonna ask any other questions. I want to do two

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things though in two or three months, about the time december or something like that when you're ready to do this. How about coming back and let's rehash this again. I'd like to have you bring you up to date and and tell us what you have decided.

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We're here, we're kind of thrown out everything that's possible. I don't want to know what you finally come up with will be very happy to do that. Rich, thank you buddy. It's a pleasure to have you here. Ladies and gentlemen, my guest has been Ron Norick

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who is a good friend and also the deputy county administrator. He's been involved in the county government reorganization project, probably the most single important project the county government has undertaken for a long, long time. My name is Rich McGlinchey. The program coming to you from the

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terrace of the john Ash company restaurant at the Veterans in is county in the nineties. I'll be back with you next week. Another memory County government family are related agency. Until then, so long, good luck and good health to each and every one of you.