A scolding of Barry County Commissioners by a Crooked Lake resident Tuesday may have been unearned. Deb Englehardt  blasted commissioners for ignoring her e-mails asking them to attend a meeting on the flooding on the lake. Englehardt said Commissioner Heather Wing responded, saying she would be unable to attend and Commissioner David Jackson did attend.

 

“He thought it was important enough to come,” she said. “Shame on you,” she said to the other commissioners. "You didn’t come to a meeting (on what) you called a crisis months ago.”

However, commissioners may have been victims of computer problems. The ones that didn’t respond to her said they didn’t get any e-mails from her to respond to.

 

With a little research, Commission Chairman Ben Geiger found a likely cause for the problem. “Due to system upgrades, commissioners had limited or no access to official email accounts for a period of time,” he said.

 

The missing e-mails weren’t the only negative comments the panel heard Tuesday.

Two frequent critics of the commission, Elden Shellenbarger and George Hubka, called the commissioners to task over last week’s meeting where tempers had flared.  Hubka said the meeting topped a reality show and Shellenbarger likened commissioners to spoiled kids in a sand box acting like babies.